John Gay's 'The Beggar's Opera' 1728-2004: Adaptations and Re-Writings by John Gay, Uwe Böker, Ines Detmers, Anna-Christina Giovanopoulos

Abstract

MLR, 103.2, 2oo8 497 somany market and fashion variables that you begin to long for state action. The British Council notwithstanding, Scottish literature's distinctive traditions and bril liances are unplundered treasures tomost people, at home aswell as abroad. So thisbook is tobe welcomed, as itdraws togethermany fruitfuland challenging lines of enquiry. It is volume 7 in the SCROLL (Scottish Cultural Review of Lan guage and Literature) series,which iswell worth checking on theRodopi website: a courageous investment in the attempt tomake up the distance. The cover indicates one aspect ofwhat the book foregrounds: J.D. Fergusson's painting Christmas Time in theSouth of France (I922) is awork of one of the Scot tishColourists group, the first trulymodern painters inBritain, who are normally neglected inAnglocentric histories of art. The painting clearly suggests how much theScots learnt from theContinent. Either in theway of comprehensive social vision such as thatofPatrick Geddes or Charles Rennie Mackintosh or in theway ofmarvel lously sensual uses of colour and light inpainting, Scots brought home a revitalizing vision to correct and revise the dour, dark Calvinist ethos of late nineteenth-century industrial 'North Britain'. European influences generally helped liberate amodern Scottish sensibilitywhich is still bearing fruit. The essays here cover an enormous range ofmaterial, from thePsalm paraphrases of George Buchanan (I 506-82) through translations of Burns into French to the reception of some recent Scottish poetry inGerman. Among much excellent work, particularly valuable are R. D. S. Jack's essay 'Translation and Early Scottish Litera ture',Kirsteen McCue's fascinating account ofwhat happened to thewords of Scots song arrangements by Beethoven andWeber, Marco Fazzini onMacDiarmid in Ita lian, and Mario Relich on Scottish writers inYugoslavia. There is an arbitrary qua lity to the book which makes it a very various feast. It is not arranged 'country by country', so there is nothing over-systematic about its presentation. Rather, it is a multi-dimensional maze of connections. Rich matter awaits round every second cor ner. The editors have done a fine job of collecting a bursting compendium ofwork thatprompts furtherexploration, and thepublishers have produced a handsome and sturdy book readers will return to for references fora long time to come. UNIVERSITY OFGLASGOW ALANRIACH J7ohn Gay's 'The Beggar's Opera' I728-2004: Adaptations and Re-Writings. Ed. by UWE BOKER, INES DETMERS, and ANNA-CHRISTINA GIOVANOPOULOS. (In ternationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwis senschaft, I05) Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. 2oo6. 347 pp. ?70; $98. ISBN 978-90-420-2 1I3-6. The Beggar's Opera was a theatrical and marketing sensation. Up to6o,ooo spectators saw the firstproduction, and themerchandising ranged frompolitical commentaries to decorative screens and fans.Grub Street dramatists capitalized on JohnGay's success by writing their own versions, and the process of rewriting has continued to the present. This collection of essays, written inGerman and English, examines theplay's eighteenth-century context and twentieth-century adaptations fromBrazil, Nigeria, Czechoslovakia, Italy, and Britain. Three contributions focus on the original context of The Beggar's Opera. In a wide-ranging essay,Uwe Boker attributes theplay's success to thebirth of consumer culture and explores its functions as a political and operatic satire. Ian Gallagher then compares Gay's portrayal of criminality to records of trials in theOld Bailey, arguing thathe exaggerates tomake his political points without departing entirely from the historical record. Gay's main targetwas Prime Minister Robert Walpole, whom he 498 Reviews criticized through the character Jonathan Peachum, modelled in turn on the real-life 'Thief-Taker General' JonathanWild. As Anna-Christina Giovanopoulos shows, The Beggar's Opera was just one of a series of texts touseWild as a symbol for Walpole. The quality of eighteenth-century spin-offs fromThe Beggar's Opera seems ques tionable. Horst Hohne sees little literarymerit inGay's sequel Polly (1728), which transported the characters to theWest Indies, and implies thatWalpole may have done Gay a favour in securing a performance ban. In literary terms, Frank Engel mann also finds little to recommend The Bow-Street Opera (anon., I773). While he argues that the adaptation deserves more attention than ithas received, this claim rests on itshistorical significance as a satire on theLondon Magistrate Court and as...