A Scene from ‘The Beggar’s Opera’ VI

John Gay's Beggar's Opera opened in London in January 1728 and then ran and ran. It put highwaymen, fences and gaolers on stage singing ballad tunes, and audiences heard the thieves' boss Peachum as a dig at Robert Walpole, the king's chief minister. Hogarth painted the same moment six times over the next three years, and this is the last and largest of them. He shows the third act, in Newgate prison, with the highwayman Macheath in chains between the two women who both claim him. He also paints the audience, seated in boxes at either side of the stage. The man at the right, looking hard at the actress playing Polly Peachum, is the Duke of Bolton. She was Lavinia Fenton, about 20 and new to the stage. She left the theatre that same year to live with him, and he married her more than 20 years later, once his first wife had died.