The Beggar's Opera
A London fence who informs on his own gang whenever a man is worth more at the gallows than at work discovers that his daughter has secretly married Macheath, the highwayman at the top of his books. Newgate holds the jailer's daughter, who has an earlier and louder claim on the same husband, and the rivalry of the two women decides how long he keeps his footing. Gay set thieves' cant to sixty-nine borrowed ballad tunes in place of Italian recitative, working up Swift's suggestion of a Newgate pastoral into the longest run London had seen and a standing insult to Walpole.
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