John Gay (1685-1732) was a Devon-born satirist best-known as the author of The Beggar’s Opera, a sort of forerunner of the modern-day jukebox musical, in that the libretto was mostly set to popular tunes of the day.
Gay was born and educated in Barnstaple, but apprenticed to a mercer in That London upon leaving school. Finding the Great Wen most uncongenial, he moved back to Barnstaple, though returned to London once his career as a dramatist took off.
The Beggar’s Opera was, unlike most operas of the day, set among highwaymen and prostitutes. Gay satirised the then prime minister, Robert Walpole. Walpole was said to be distinctly unamused by this, and almost certainly leaned on the Lord Chamberlain to ban its sequel, Polly, where the satire was even more pointed. Polly was not performed until after Gay’s death, and its legacy has not been as enduring as that of its predecessor, which later formed the basis of Berthold Brecht and Kurt Weill’s The Threepenny Opera.
Though Gay was a Tory, and a member of a circle of influential Tory literary figures that also included Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, his philosophy was said to be strongly influenced by the Somerset-born “father of Liberalism”, John Locke. But that’s a subject for another post.
