The resistible rise of arturo ui script pdf

Methuen Drama Modern Classics

The Methuen Drama Modern Plays series has always been at the forefront of modern playwriting and has reflected the most exciting developments in modern drama since 1959. To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Methuen Drama, the series was relaunched in 2009 as Methuen Drama Modern Classics, and continues to offer readers a choice selection of the best modern plays.

The Threepenny Opera First staged in 1928 at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, Berlin (now the home of the Berliner Ensemble), The Threepenny Opera was Brecht’s first and most outstanding success. Based on John Gay’s eighteenth-century Beggar’s Opera, the play is a satire on the capitalist bourgeois society of the Weimar Republic despite its setting in a mock- Victorian Soho. With Kurt Weill’s music, which was one of the earliest and most successful attempts to introduce the jazz idiom into the theatre, it became a popular hit throughout the western world. Filmed three times, it remains one of Brecht’s best loved and most performed plays.

This new translation, first staged in 1975 at York Theatre Royal and subsequently at the Adelaide Playhouse and the Lincoln Center, New York, is by John Willett and Ralph Manheim, who also include Brecht’s own notes and discarded songs as well as an extensive editorial commentary on the genesis of the play.

Bertolt Brecht was born in Augsburg on 10 February 1898, and died in Berlin on 14 August 1956. He grew to maturity as a playwright in the frenetic years of the twenties and early thirties, with such plays as Man equals Man, The Threepenny Opera, Mahagonny and The Mother. He left Germany when Hitler came to power in 1933, eventually reaching the United States in 1941, where he remained until 1947. It was during this period of exile that such masterpieces as The Life of Galileo, Mother Courage, The Caucasian Chalk Circle and Puntila were written. Shortly after his return to Europe in 1947 he founded the Berliner Ensemble, and from then until his death was mainly occupied in producing his own plays.

Other Bertolt Brecht publications by Bloomsbury Methuen Drama

Brecht Collected Plays: One (Baal, Drums in the Night, In the Jungle of Cities, The Life of Edward II of

England, A Respectable Wedding, The Beggar or the Dead Dog, Driving Out a Devil, Lux in Tenebris, The Catch)

Brecht Collected Plays: Two (Man Equals Man, The Elephant Calf, The Threepenny Opera,

The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, The Seven Deadly Sins)

Brecht Collected Plays: Three (Lindbergh’s Flight, The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent, He Said Yes/He Said No, The Decision, The Mother, The Exception and

the Rule, The Horations and the Curiatians, St Joan of the Stockyards)

Brecht Collected Plays: Four (Round Heads and Pointed Heads, Fear and Misery of the Third Reich,

Señora Carrar’s Rifles, Dansen, How Much Is Your Iron?, The Trial of Lucullus)

Brecht Collected Plays: Five (Life of Galileo, Mother Courage and Her Children)

Brecht Collected Plays: Six (The Good Person of Szechwan, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui,

Mr Puntila and His Man Matti)

Brecht Collected Plays: Seven (The Visions of Simone Machard, Schweyk in the Second World War,

The Caucasian Chalk Circle, The Duchess of Malfi)

Brecht Collected Plays: Eight (The Days of the Commune, The Antigone of Sophocles,

Turandot or the Whitewashers’ Congress)

Berliner Ensemble Adaptations – publishing 2014 (The Tutor, Coriolanus, The Trial of Joan of Arc at Rouen 1431,

Don Juan, Trumpets and Drums)

Bertolt Brecht Journals, 1934-55 Brecht on Art and Politics Brecht on Film and Radio

Brecht on Performance - publishing 2014 Brecht on Theatre - publishing 2014 Brecht in Practice - publishing 2014

The Craft of Theatre: Seminars and Discussions in Brechtian Theatre Brecht, Music and Culture - publishing 2014

Brecht in Context The Theatre of Bertolt Brecht Brecht: A Choice of Evils

Bertolt Brecht: A Literary Life - publishing 2014

A Guide to the Plays of Bertolt Brecht

BERTOLT BRECHT

The Threepenny Opera translated by Ralph Manheim and John Willet

Original work entitled Die Dreigroschenoper

edited and introduced by John Willet and Ralph Manheim

Contents

Introduction THE THREEPENNY OPERA

After John Gay: The Beggar’s Opera NOTES AND VARIANTS

Texts by Brecht

Additional songs from ‘The Bruise’

Appendix

On The Threepenny Opera

Notes to The Threepenny Opera

Note by Kurt Weill

About The Threepenny Opera (a public letter)

Transcript

From a conversation between Brecht and Giorgio Strehler on 25 October 1955 with regard to the forthcoming Milan production

Editorial Notes

1. General

2. The 1928 stage script

3. From the stage script to the present text

Introduction

First staged only two years after Man equals Man, The Threepenny Opera was a very different kind of achievement. For where the earlier play had its roots in Brecht’s Augsburg youth and developed under a variety of influences over many years, The Threepenny Opera – or, more precisely, Brecht’s contribution to it – was quickly written for a specific purpose. Moreover although both remained among his favourite plays he showed his affection this time not by continually revising the text as he did with Man equals Man but by leaving the original version unchanged and instead developing it first as a film story, then as a novel. What we have here therefore is the work as it was written and staged just half a century ago in 1928. Like all his plays it is something of a montage, embracing elements from different sources and periods. But far more than most of them it remains nailed to a particular moment in German history.

The second half of the 1920s was the stable period of the Weimar Republic, starting in 1924, once the effects of the inflation began to be overcome and the new American capital began flowing into the country, and ending in 1929 with the Wall Street crash. In the theatre it began with a succession of new-style productions, among which Brecht’s Edward II and Erich Engel’s Coriolanus early in 1925 were significant as leading to a general re-evaluation of the classics; but the real landmark was Carl Zuckmayer’s Der fröhliche Weinberg at the end of that year, with its revelation of the public appetite for literate but unpretentious down-to-earth comedy. Brecht at this time was trying to grapple with the problem of writing plays about the modern world, with all its economic complexities and its wide-ranging interrelationships, and this led both to a more conscious development of the ‘epic’ form and to a new fascination with the economic analysis put forward by Karl Marx, whom he started reading in 1926. It must have been this twofold interest, coupled with his growing reputation as one of the most vocal and original of the younger playwrights, that took him into the collective of ‘dramaturgs’ formed by Erwin Piscator when he set up his first independent company at the Theater am Nollendorfplatz in the autumn of 1927. Though this was a Berlin West End theatre, appealing largely to a fashionable audience, its politics were Communist and its four productions established new ways of tackling just the sort of themes that had begun plaguing Brecht. None the less the particular plays which he was trying to write – notably Joe P. Fleischhacker, based on Frank Norris’s novel The Pit about the Chicago wheat market, and Decline of the Egoist Johann Fatzer about soldiers deserting in the First World War – were neither performed there nor even completed. Indeed from Man equals Man in 1926 to Saint Joan of the Stockyards in 1931 he remained unable to finish the large-scale plays that preoccupied him most.

At the same time his first meeting with Kurt Weill in the spring of 1927, soon after Weill’s enthusiastic review of the Berlin Radio broadcast of Man equals Man, gave him a new and promising line to follow. Weill, who had been one of Busoni’s handful of pupils at the Berlin Academy, was becoming known as a dissonant, strongly contrapuntal neo- classical composer to be ranked with Hindemith, Toch and Ernst Křenek, but he was also a man of considerable literary judgement who had been collaborating with two of the few

playwrights about whom Brecht had anything good to say: Georg Kaiser and Iwan Goll. Enormously impressed not only by the broadcast but also by Brecht’s first book of poems, the Devotions, Weill now wished to collaborate with him too. According to Weill’s account they had no sooner met than they started discussing the opera medium; the word ‘Mahagonny’ cropped up, and with it the notion of a ‘paradise city’. In other words, so it would appear, Brecht at the outset introduced him to that notion of a ‘Mahagonny Opera’ which he had brought with him from Munich (originally with his first wife Marianne in mind, she being an opera singer), and which related to the ‘Mahagonny Songs’ in the Devotions. The idea of turning this into a full-scale opera was thus already in the air when Weill got a commission to contribute one of a series of short operas to the forthcoming Baden-Baden ‘German Chamber Music’ festival that summer. Basing himself on the ‘Mahagonny Songs’, and making some use of Brecht’s own tunes for them, he started in May to compose the jazzy ‘songspiel’ now known as The Little Mahagonny which was performed at Baden-Baden in a boxing-ring stage in July. After this the two collaborators worked throughout the rest of the year on the libretto for the full-scale opera, which was ready for Weill to begin composing early in 1928.

In effect then it can be said that Brecht started the year of The Threepenny Opera with three main irons in the fire. There was his technically and politically stimulating job with Piscator, which was now involving him in the rewriting of the official Schweik adaptation to suit the revolutionary staging which Piscator and his designer George Grosz had devised. There were his own incomplete social-political plays, one of which – Fleischhacker – had already been announced on Piscator’s prospectus. And then there was the very promising collaboration with Weill, involving also his own preferred designer Caspar Neher (who was outside Piscator’s scheme of things). Looking now at the state of the German theatre at the time it can be seen that any reliance on Piscator involved considerable risks, for he was already far exceeding his budgeted costs and the combination of bad planning and expensive technical innovations was soon to be fatal. None the less it was Piscator who sparked off a wave of interest in the Zeitstück, or ‘play of the times’, from which a number of other left-wing writers benefited and which might well have led to a production for one of Brecht’s essays in the genre. Oddly enough, however, it was the opera medium which reflected this first, following the impact of Křenek’s jazz opera Jonny spielt auf in February (Leipzig premiere) and October (Berlin production) 1927. And with Klemperer’s appointment that year to head the Kroll-Oper, the second state opera house in Berlin, a unique centre for modern opera was created in which such associates of Brecht’s as Neher and Ernst Legal and Jacob Geis (both of whom had been involved with Man equals Man) were soon to find employment.

The critical moment came in March–April 1928, when Piscator had taken on a second theatre and was fast heading for bankruptcy. Some three months earlier a new management had been set up in Berlin, headed by a young actor called Ernst-Josef Aufricht, once a member of Berthold Viertel’s much respected company ‘Die Truppe’. Around Christmas he had been given 100,000 marks by his father with which to open his own Berlin theatre, and he used this to rent the medium-sized late nineteenth-century Theater am Schiffbauerdamm not far from Reinhardt’s Deutsches Theater. He booked Erich Engel, then busy with Brecht’s Man equals Man at the Volksbühne, to direct the

opening production, if possible to coincide with his own twenty-eighth birthday on 31 August. All that remained was to find a play. This was not quite so simple, even after he had brought in a young friend of Karl Kraus’s called Heinrich Fischer to help him and act as his deputy. Kraus, Wedekind, Toller, Feuchtwanger, Kaiser, even the much older Sudermann were in turn considered or actually approached, but to no effect. Then one of those happy accidents occurred which go to make theatre history: Fischer ran into Brecht in a café, introduced him to Aufricht and asked if he had anything that would answer their needs. Brecht’s own work in progress – presumably Fleischhacker – would not do; it was already promised – presumably to Piscator – and Aufricht appears to have been bored by his account of it. But Brecht also mentioned a translation of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera which his collaborator Elisabeth Hauptmann had begun making the previous November. This eighteenth-century satire had been an immense success in Nigel Playfair’s revival at the Lyric, Hammersmith some five or six years earlier, and to the two entrepreneurs the idea ‘smelt of theatre’. They read all that had so far been written, under the provisional title Gesindel, or Scum, and decided that this was the play with which to open.

Just how much Brecht had had to do with the script at this exploratory stage is uncertain, but he now took the lead and proposed that Weill should be brought in to write modern settings for the songs. Aufricht, by his own account, thereupon went privately to hear two of Weill’s Kaiser operas, was appalled by their atonality and told his musical director Theo Mackeben to get hold of the traditional Pepusch arrangements in case Weill came up with something impossibly rebarbative. In mid-May the whole team were packed off to Le Lavandou in the south of France to complete the work: the Brechts, the Weills, Hauptmann, Engel. Here, and subsequently on the Ammersee in Bavaria, Brecht seems to have written some brand-new scenes (the stable wedding for instance, which bears no relation to Gay’s original), and started adding his own songs, four of them piratically derived from a German version of Villon. On 1 August rehearsals started, with a duplicated script which, as our notes show, still contained a good deal of the original work, as well as songs by Gay himself and Rudyard Kipling which later disappeared. A succession of accidents, catastrophes and stopgaps then occurred. Carola Neher, who was to play Polly, arrived a fortnight late from her husband Klabund’s deathbed, and abandoned her part; Roma Bahn was recruited and learned it in four days. Feuchtwanger suggested the new title; Karl Kraus added the second verse to the Jealousy Duet. Helene Weigel, cast as Mrs Coaxer the brothel Madame, developed appendicitis and the part was cut. The cabaret singer Rosa Valetti objected to the ‘Song of Sexual Obsession’ which she had to sing as Mrs Peachum, so this too went; Käte Kühl as Lucy could not manage the florid solo which Weill had written for another actress in scene 8, so this was eliminated and later the scene itself was cut; Weill’s young wife Lotte Lenya was accidentally left off the printed programme; the play was found to be three-quarters of an hour too long, leading to massive cuts in Peachum’s part and the dropping of the ‘Solomon Song’; the finale was only written during the rehearsals; and late on the ‘Ballad of Mac the Knife’ was added as an inspired afterthought.

All accounts agree that the production’s prospects seemed extremely bad, with only Weill’s music and Caspar Neher’s sets remaining unaffected by the mounting chaos. Even the costumes were simply those available, so Brecht was to say later (p. 103), while the

Victorian setting was decided less by the needs of the story than by the shortage of time. The dress rehearsal must have been disastrous, the reactions of the first-night audience a confirmation of this, lasting right into the second scene, even after the singing of ‘Pirate Jenny’ in the stable. But with the ‘Cannon Song’ the applause suddenly burst loose. Quite unexpectedly, inspiredly, improvisedly, management and collaborators found themselves with the greatest German hit of the 1920s on their hands.

It struck Berlin during an interregnum, as it were: at a moment when Piscator had temporarily disappeared as an active force in the left-wing theatre and the various collective groups which succeeded him had not yet got off the ground. For Brecht and Weill there was now the composition of Mahagonny to be resumed – something that was only completed in November 1929 – as well as a small Berlin Requiem which Weill had agreed to write for Radio Frankfurt on texts by Brecht, and which they sketched out in November and December 1928. Both men probably also had some involvement in the production of Feuchtwanger’s second ‘Anglo-Saxon Play’ Die Petroleuminseln at the Staatstheater in the former month, for which Weill wrote the music and Neher once more provided sets. But the immediate effect of The Threepenny Opera’s success was to establish the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm as the leading left-wing theatre of the moment in Berlin. Retrospectively Brecht came to speak of it as ‘his’ theatre, and indeed to a great extent he does seem to have dominated its entire opening season. For with The Threepenny Opera temporarily transferred to another theatre (and Carola Neher at some point assuming her original role as Polly), he took over the direction of Marieluise Fleisser’s anti-militarist Bavarian farce Die Pioniere von Ingolstadt, a sequel to the play which he had recommended to the Junge Bühne three years earlier. This opened on 31 March 1929 and featured an unknown actor whom Brecht had advised Aufricht to engage on a three-year contract – Peter Lorre – along with Kurt Gerron and Lenya, the Brown and Jenny from his own play. The farce itself was too outspoken for the police and the military, and had to be bowdlerised, but it none the less ran for two months and broke even; Aufricht later judged it the best of all the productions which he sponsored. Then The Threepenny Opera returned for the rest of the season, and the problem of the next play had to be faced.

Aufricht wanted another Brecht–Weill work on the same lines as before. It was scheduled once more for 31 August; Engel and Neher were again booked, and a number of the same actors already under contract. But the moment had passed, the first symptoms of the imminent economic crisis were beginning to make themselves felt, the veneer of political tolerance was wearing thin. Brecht had a seismographic feeling for such changes, and he was already heading towards a much more didactic kind of theatre, in which he briefly also managed to involve Weill. As a result Happy End, the Chicago comedy which was supposed to follow up The Threepenny Opera’s success, never really stirred his interest or drew the same inspired ideas from him as had Gay’s inherently much superior original. Superficially the prospects might have seemed the same as before, with Elisabeth Hauptmann providing the basic dialogue and Brecht writing a number of characteristic songs, some of them eliciting first-rate settings from Weill. But whereas in 1928 Brecht was willing to make many radical changes in the former, so that his stamp on the final play is unmistakable, only a year later this was no longer the case. At some point during

the spring of 1929 he began writing his first Lehrstücke or didactic plays under the twofold influence of the Japanese Noh drama and Hindemith’s concept of Gemeinschaftsmusik – the educational implications of making music in common. Two works for that summer’s Baden-Baden festival resulted. Almost at the same time his hitherto uncommitted left-wing opinions crystallised as a consequence, it seems, of the Berlin May Day demonstration at which the police killed thirty-one people. From then on he was aligned with the German Communist Party, and if this led him to foist a more ‘provocative’ ending on Happy End it also helped further to alienate him from that play without making it appear any better in the eyes of the party critics.

But, however Brecht himself might be changing at this time, The Threepenny Opera was a play which he had no wish to discard. Obviously it was a very much better and solider work than its successor, though the latter’s rehabilitation in the 1960s (which has led it to be performed under Brecht’s name in both England and the U.S.) shows the silliness of its text to be not quite the liability it once seemed. The major difference, however, lay in the former work’s enormous success, which kept it running in different parts of Germany until the Nazis took over and in other countries longer still. This did not immediately tempt Brecht to tinker with the text of the play (as he continued to do with Man equals Man), but when Warner Brothers and Tobis, acting through producers called Nero-Film, contracted in May 1930 to make a film version he started looking at it with changed – and changing – eyes. Though sound film was then in its infancy, the prospects seemed good: G. W. Pabst was to be the director, Lania (of Piscator’s old collective) to write the script; Carola Neher would play Polly, Lenya Jenny; while Brecht and Weill were given a say respectively in the script and the music. Two parallel versions would be made, one German and one French. That summer, accordingly, Brecht wrote Lania the treatment called ‘Die Beule’, ‘The Bruise’, which in effect ignores all that had remained of The Beggar’s Opera and uses the characters and the Victorian London setting to point a radically changed moral. Everything now is on a larger scale – the gang is 120 strong, Peachum heads a Begging Trust – and a higher social level, with peers, a general and a magistrate at Macheath’s wedding in the ducal manège. The gang and the beggars this time are engaged in a war whose symbol is the bruise inflicted by the former on a beggar called Sam. Peachum accordingly uses the beggars to disfigure the smartly repainted slum streets through which the Queen is to pass; he interviews Brown with seven lawyers behind him, and secures Macheath’s arrest after a bucolic picnic and a chase in which a car full of policemen pursues a car full of whores. There is no escape and no second arrest. Under Polly’s direction the gang has simply taken over the National Deposit Bank and converted itself into a group of solemn financiers. Both they and Mrs Peachum now become uneasy about the dangers of unleashing the poor; while Brown has a terrible dream, in which thousands of poor people emerge from under one of the Thames bridges as a great flood, sweeping through the streets and public buildings. So the ‘mounted Messengers’ this time are the bankers who arrive to bail Macheath out; and rather than disappoint the crowds Peachum hands over Sam to be hanged instead. The social façades are maintained as Macheath joins the reunited bourgeoisie awaiting the arrival of their Queen.

This scheme, on which Neher and the Bulgarian director Slatan Dudow also collaborated, was plainly unwelcome to the producers, and the fact that Brecht only met

the agreed August deadline by communicating it to Lania orally did not improve matters. Though Lania needed him to continue working the Nero firm chose to dismiss Brecht at this stage, and brought in the Communist film critic Béla Balázs to help complete the script. A law suit followed, which Brecht lost, and thereafter he had no words too bad for Pabst’s film, which meanwhile went obstinately ahead, to be shown in Berlin on 19 February 1931. Though the long theoretical essay which Brecht thereafter wrote on the ‘Threepenny Lawsuit’, as he termed it, is an illuminating work, not least for its links with the ideas of his new friend Walter Benjamin, the modern reader should not allow its downright condemnation to put him off the film. For in fact not only did the latter capture aspects of the original (for instance Carola Neher’s interpretation of Polly) that necessarily elude any modern production, but it also incorporates a surprising proportion of Brecht’s changes to the story. These, however, continued to itch Brecht, so that while leaving the play itself as it had been in the 1928 production (with all its last-minute decisions and improvisations) he was soon planning its further development in The Threepenny Novel, his one substantial work of fiction, which he was to hand in to its Dutch publisher some months after leaving Germany in 1933. Engel, when he came again to direct the play at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm for the Berliner Ensemble in 1960, after Brecht’s death, wondered at first if he could not incorporate some of the ideas from ‘The Bruise’ and the novel, but soon decided that they were too divergent from the play. Brecht for his part wrote some topical versions of the songs (p. 85 ff.) for other directors in the immediate post-war years, but it is not clear if and when they were used, and certainly he never made them a permanent part of the text; indeed they hardly merit it. All the same, his discussions in connection with Giorgio Strehler’s Milan production in the last year of his life (p. 100) show that he regarded The Threepenny Opera as no inviolable museum piece. For he envisaged a new framework, and welcomed Strehler’s updating of the story to the era of the Keystone Cops.

Like Man equals Man, The Threepenny Opera presents a problem to earnest-minded interpreters, since it is hard to reconcile its flippancies with Brecht’s status as a Communist playwright, while its repeated successes in the commercial theatres of bourgeois society – from Berlin of the 1920s to New York of the 1970s – take some explaining away. The trouble here is not only that when Brecht actually wrote his share of this play he was only beginning to explore Marxism and had barely begun to relate to the class struggle (as the leading Communist Party critic Alfred Kemény pointed out), but that the issue was subsequently confused by Brecht’s writing all his own notes and interpretations after adopting a more committed position in 1929. His remarks moreover are too easily taken out of context and at their face value: his insistence, for instance, that the play is a critique of bourgeois society and not merely of the Lumpenproletariat was only a retort – quite unsubstantiated – to that ill-disposed critic in the party’s daily Die Rote Fahne who had accused him of the contrary, referred to him as ‘the Bohemian Bert Brecht’ and dismissed the whole work as a money-spinner containing ‘Not a vestige of modern social or political satire’. Just like Piscator’s productions of the previous season The Threepenny Opera undoubtedly appealed to the fashionable Berlin public and subsequently to the middle classes throughout Germany, and if it gave them an increasingly cynical view of their own institutions it does not seem to have prompted either them or any other section of society to try to change these for the better. The fact

was simply that ‘one has to have seen it’, as the elegant and cosmopolitan Count Kessler noted in his diary after doing so with a party that included an ambassador and a director of the Dresdner Bank.

Brecht himself had far too much affection for this work to admit the ineffectiveness of its message, even after he had tacitly confirmed such accusations by going over to austerer, explicitly didactic forms. Even years later he could still view it through something of a pink cloud, as indicated by his wishful replies to Giorgio Strehler on p. 102. Yet the most favourable criticisms at the time were concerned less with its attack on ‘bourgeois morality’ and capitalist property rights as being based on theft than with its establishment of a highly original new theatrical genre. Thus Herbert Ihering, who from the first had been Brecht’s leading supporter among the Berlin critics, while welcoming this ‘new form, open to every possibility, every kind of content’, pointed out that ‘this content, however, has still to come’. Part of the common over-estimation of the play’s social purpose and impact is due most probably to the intense dislike felt for it by the German nationalist reaction which began gaining ground within a year of the première and was soon to bring the Nazis their first great electoral successes. It was a time of growing polarisation in German political and cultural life, and if the Berlin theatre continued to move leftwards, dragging part of the cinema with it, there was now much less hesitation on the part of the authorities and the great middlebrow public to voice their dislike of anything ‘alien’ and ‘decadent’ in the arts. Not only was Weill a leading target for such campaigns, largely on racialist grounds, but the brothel scene and the cynicism of the songs were certainly enough to qualify Brecht too, whether or not he represented any kind of serious threat. A great wave of irrational feeling was building up, and in so far as it was directed against The Threepenny Opera its political aspects were quite deceptive. Thus that shrewd observer Kurt Tucholsky could write in spring 1930 that the battle was a sham one because the work itself was unrealistic. ‘This writer can be compared to a man cooking soup on a burning house. It isn’t he who caused the fire.’

Yet if its political significance is often overrated today The Threepenny Opera remains revolutionary in a less obvious but equally disturbing sense. For, like The Little Mahagonny before it, it struck almost instinctively at the whole hierarchical order of the arts, with opera on its Wagnerian pinnacle at the top, and reshuffled highbrow and lowbrow elements to form a new kind of musical theatre which would upset every accepted notion of what was socially and culturally proper. This was what the best critics immediately recognised, Ihering writing that the success of The Threepenny Opera was of immense importance:

A theatre that is not smart, not geared to ‘society’, has broken through to the audience.

Far more so the musicians; thus Klemperer included the wind suite from the music in his concerts and is reported to have seen the 1928 production ten times, while Heinrich Strobel compared it with The Soldier’s Tale as ‘showing the way’ and Theodor Adorno judged it the most important event since Berg’s Wozzeck. In many ways the change of values which it implied has proved harder for later societies to assimilate than have the somewhat random gibes at business, religious hypocrisy, individual charity, romantic marriage and the judicial system which make up the political content of the text. Particularly when seen in conjunction with Brecht’s and Walter Benjamin’s current

thinking about the ‘apparatus’ of the arts, it suggested a complete cultural and sociological re-evaluation which would alter all the existing categories, starting with those of opera and operetta (for it was neither), as well as the corresponding techniques of acting, singing and so forth. Today, though certainly poverty, slums, corrupt business practices and biassed justice continue to exist in our most prosperous societies, we no longer feel that The Threepenny Opera has anything all that acute to say about them. But the implications of the new form for singers, musicians, voice teachers and above all for institutionalised opera are still far from fully digested. And because Brecht and his friends did not yet manage to capture the ‘apparatus’ of which they spoke this holds good for Communist as well as for capitalist society.

In reading Brecht’s notes which we print it must be remembered that they were written some two years after the première and only published in 1931. Important as they remain for the development of his theory and practice of theatre, as a guide to the interpretation of the play they tend to ignore the largely irresponsible lightheartedness with which the collaborators originally set to work. Nor is there any material in our own account of the text’s evolution for those directors who would like to sharpen its attack on capitalist morality and institutions – by adding, for instance, episodes from Macheath’s subsequent career as a banker in line with Brecht’s film treatment in ‘The Bruise’; for Brecht himself wrote no such scene. The reallocation of Polly’s ‘Pirate Jenny’ song, too, to Jenny as in the film (where it somewhat overloads the brothel episode), is nowhere suggested by Brecht, though many directors have opted for it either to avoid the confusion of names or to build up the whore’s part. What does emerge from the early scripts (of which nothing has yet been published in Germany itself) is a number of excellent passages and episodes, some of which could certainly help to clarify the story. The poisoning episode with Lucy in Act 3 is dispensable, though it came from Gay and inspired a splendid piece of musical parody from Weill, now in the miniature score. But Peachum’s original conclusion to Act 2 is not only funnier than the rather laboured ‘Semiramis’ speech of the final version; it also explains the otherwise rather baffling start to Act 3. Similarly Lucy’s disclosure of her father’s drunkenness (p. 116) makes his startling ineptitude at that point easier to accept. All such passages, however, date from before 31 August 1928 and are in no sense afterthoughts or amendments in the light of Brecht’s changing interpretations of his story, characters and setting. Aside from the postwar versions of some of the songs (which were not used in the Berliner Ensemble production) he left it as a play of that time.

Of course this is not going to stop directors and dramaturgs from making their own attempts to bring it up to date or put it in some framework more intelligible to a particular audience. But they must be clear that they do this on their own responsibility. They cannot claim to be doing Brecht’s work for him and giving us the play ‘he would have written’ supposing he had been a few years older and a rather better Marxist. After all, he could perfectly well have done this himself if he had wished. Instead he allowed it to remain as it was: the occasional work of a thirty-year-old writer and a composer of twenty-eight. Central as it was to his success in the theatre, it was not in the main line of his aims and concerns either before and after. It was, and is, a brilliant but by no means flawless distraction.

THE EDITORS

The Threepenny Opera after John Gay: The Beggar’s Opera

Collaborators: ELISABETH HAUPTMANN, KURT WEILL

Translators: RALPH MANHEIM, JOHN WILLETT

Characters

MACHEATH, called Mac the Knife

JONATHAN JEREMIAH PEACHUM, proprietor of the Beggar’s Friend Ltd

CELIA PEACHUM, his wife

POLLY PEACHUM, his daughter

BROWN, High Sheriff of London

LUCY, his daughter LOW-DIVE JENNY

SMITH

THE REVEREND KIMBALL

FILCH

A BALLAD SINGER

THE GANG

Beggars

Whores

Constables

PROLOGUE

The Ballad of Mac the Knife

Fair in Soho. The beggars are begging, the thieves are stealing, the whores are whoring. A ballad singer sings a ballad.

See the shark with teeth like razors.

All can read his open face.

And Macheath has got a knife, but

Not in such an obvious place.

See the shark, how red his fins are

As he slashes at his prey.

Mac the Knife wears white kid gloves which

Give the minimum away.

By the Thames’s turbid waters

Men abruptly tumble down.

Is it plague or is it cholera?

Or a sign Macheath’s in town?

On a beautiful blue Sunday

See a corpse stretched in the Strand.

See a man dodge round the corner …

Mackie’s friends will understand.

And Schmul Meier, reported missing

Like so many wealthy men:

Mac the Knife acquired his cash box.

God alone knows how or when.

Peachum goes walking across the stage from left to right with his wife and daughter.

Jenny Towler turned up lately

With a knife stuck through her breast

While Macheath walks the Embankment

Nonchalantly unimpressed.

Where is Alfred Gleet the cabman?

Who can get that story clear?

All the world may know the answer

Just Macheath has no idea.

And the ghastly fire in Soho –

Seven children at a go –

In the crowd stands Mac the Knife, but he

Isn’t asked and doesn’t know.

And the child-bride in her nightie

Whose assailant’s still at large

Violated in her slumbers –

Mackie, how much did you charge?

Laughter among the whores. A man steps out from their midst and walks quickly away across the square.

LOW-DIVE JENNY: That was Mac the Knife!

ACT ONE

I To combat the increasing callousness of mankind, J. Peachum, a man of business, has opened a shop where the poorest of the poor can acquire an exterior that will touch the hardest of hearts.

Jonathan Jeremiah Peacham’s outfitting shop for beggars.

PEACHUM’S MORNING HYMN

You ramshackle Christian, awake!

Get on with your sinful employment

Show what a good crook you could make.

The Lord will cut short your enjoyment.

Betray your own brother, you rogue

And sell your old woman, you rat.

You think the Lord God’s just a joke?

He’ll give you His Judgement on that.

PEACHUM to the audience: Something new is needed. My business is too hard, for my business is arousing human sympathy. There are a few things that stir men’s souls, just a few, but the trouble is that after repeated use they lose their effect. Because man has the abominable gift of being able to deaden his feelings at will, so to speak. Suppose, for instance, a man sees another man standing on the corner with a stump for an arm; the first time he may be shocked enough to give him tenpence, but the second time it will only be fivepence, and if he sees him a third time he’ll hand him over to the police without batting an eyelash. It’s the same with the spiritual approach. A large sign saying ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive’ is lowered from the grid. What good are the most beautiful, the most poignant sayings, painted on the most enticing little signs, when they get expended so quickly? The Bible has four or five sayings that stir the heart; once a man has expended them, there’s nothing for it but starvation. Take this one, for instance – ‘Give and it shall be given unto you’ – how threadbare it is after hanging here a mere three weeks. Yes, you have to keep on offering something new. So it’s back to the good old Bible again, but how long can it go on providing? Knocking. Peachum opens. Enter a young man by the name of Filch.

FILCH: Messrs Peachum & Co.?

PEACHUM: Peachum.

FILCH: Are you the proprietor of The Beggar’s Friend Ltd.? I’ve been sent to you. Fine slogans you’ve got there! Money in the bank, those are. Got a whole library full of them, I suppose? That’s what I call really something. What chance has a bloke like me got to think up ideas like that; and how can business progress without education?

PEACHUM: What’s your name?

FILCH: It’s this way, Mr Peachum, I’ve been down on my luck since a boy. Mother drank, father gambled. Left to my own resources at an early age, without a mother’s tender hand, I sank deeper and deeper into the quicksands of the big city. I’ve never known a father’s care or the blessings of a happy home. So now you see me …

PEACHUM: So now I see you …

FILCH confused: … bereft of all support, a prey to my baser instincts.

PEACHUM: Like a derelict on the high seas and so on. Now tell me, derelict, which district have you been reciting that fairy story in?

FILCH: What do you mean, Mr Peachum?

PEACHUM: You deliver that speech in public, I take it?

FILCH: Well, it’s this way, Mr Peachum, yesterday there was an unpleasant little incident in Highland Street. There I am, standing on the corner quiet and miserable, holding out my hat, no suspicion of anything nasty …

PEACHUM leafs through a notebook: Highland Street. Yes, yes, right. You’re the bastard that Honey and Sam caught yesterday. You had the impudence to be molesting passers- by in District 10. We let you off with a thrashing because we had reason to believe you didn’t know what’s what. But if you show your face again it’ll be the chop for you. Got it?

FILCH: Please, Mr Peachum, please. What can I do, Mr Peachum? The gentlemen beat me black and blue and then they gave me your business card. If I took off my coat, you’d think you were looking at a fish on a slab.

PEACHUM: My friend, if you’re not flat as a kipper, then my men weren’t doing their job properly. Along come these young whipper-snappers who think they’ve only got to hold out their paw to land a steak. What would you say if someone started fishing the best trout out of your pond?

FILCH: It’s like this, Mr Peachum – I haven’t got a pond.

PEACHUM: Licences are delivered to professionals only. Points in a businesslike way to a map of the city. London is divided into fourteen districts. Any man who intends to practise the craft of begging in any one of them needs a licence from Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum & Co. Why, anybody could come along – a prey to his baser instincts.

FILCH: Mr Peachum, only a few shillings stand between me and utter ruin. Something must be done. With two shillings in my pocket I …

PEACHUM: One pound.

FILCH: Mr Peachum!

Points imploringly at a sign saying ‘Do not turn a deaf ear to misery!’ Peachum points to the curtain over a showcase, on which is written: ‘Give and it shall be given unto you!’

FILCH: Ten bob.

PEACHUM: Plus fifty per cent of your take, settle up once a week. With outfit seventy per cent.

FILCH: What does the outfit consist of?

PEACHUM: That’s for the firm to decide.

FILCH: Which district could I start in?

PEACHUM: Baker Street. Numbers 2 to 104. That comes even cheaper. Only fifty per cent, including the outfit.

FILCH: Very well. He pays.

PEACHUM: Your name?

FILCH: Charles Filch.

PEACHUM: Right. Shouts. Mrs Peachum! Mrs Peachum enters. This is Filch. Number 314. Baker Street district. I’ll do his entry myself. Trust you to pick this moment to apply, just before the Coronation, when for once in a lifetime there’s a chance of making a little something. Outfit C. He opens a linen curtain before a showcase in which there are five wax dummies.

FILCH: What’s that?

PEACHUM: Those are the five basic types of misery, those most likely to touch the human heart. The sight of such types puts a man into the unnatural state where he is willing to part with money. Outfit A: Victim of vehicular progress. The merry paraplegic, always cheerful – He acts it out. – always carefree, emphasised by arm-stump. Outfit B: Victim of the Higher Strategy. The Tiresome Trembler, molests passers-by, operates by inspiring nausea – He acts it out. – attenuated by medals. Outfit C: Victim of advanced Technology. The Pitiful Blind Man, the Cordon Bleu of Beggary.

He acts it out, staggering toward Filch. The moment he bumps into Filch, Filch cries out in horror. Peachum stops at once, looks at him with amazement and suddenly roars.

He’s sorry for me! You’ll never be a beggar as long as you live! You’re only fit to be begged from! Very well, outfit D! Celia, you’ve been drinking again. And now you can’t see straight. Number 136 has complained about his outfit. How often do I have to tell you that a gentleman doesn’t put on filthy clothes? The only thing about it that could inspire pity was the stains and they should have been added by just ironing in candle wax. Use your head! Have I got to do everything myself? To Filch: Take off your clothes and put this on, but mind you, look after it!

FILCH: What about my things?

PEACHUM: Property of the firm. Outfit E: young man who has seen better days or, if you’d rather, never thought it would come to this.

FILCH: Oh, you use them again? Why can’t I do the better days act?

PEACHUM: Because nobody can make his own suffering sound convincing, my boy. If you have a bellyache and say so, people will simply be disgusted. Anyway, you’re not here to ask questions but to put these things on.

FILCH: Aren’t they rather dirty? After Peachum has given him a penetrating look. Excuse me, sir, please excuse me.

MRS PEACHUM: Shake a leg, son, I’m not standing here holding your trousers till Christmas.

FILCH suddenly emphatic: But I’m not taking my shoes off! Absolutely not. I’d sooner pack the whole thing in. They’re the only present my poor mother ever gave me, I may have sunk pretty low, but never …

MRS PEACHUM: Stop drivelling. We all know your feet are dirty.

FILCH: Where am I supposed to wash my feet? In midwinter?

Mrs Peachum leads him behind a screen, then she sits down on the left and starts ironing candle wax into a suit.

PEACHUM: Where’s your daughter?

MRS PEACHUM: Polly? Upstairs.

PEACHUM: Has that man been here again? The one who’s always coming round when I’m out?

MRS PEACHUM: Don’t be so suspicious, Jonathan, there’s no finer gentleman. The Captain takes a real interest in our Polly.

PEACHUM: I see.

MRS PEACHUM: And if I’ve got half an eye in my head, Polly thinks he’s very nice too.

PEACHUM: Celia, the way you chuck your daughter around anyone would think I was a millionaire. Wanting to marry her off? The idea! Do you think this lousy business of ours would survive a week if those ragamuffins our customers had nothing better than our legs to look at? A husband! He’d have us in his clutches in three shakes! In his clutches! Do you think your daughter can hold her tongue in bed any better than you?

MRS PEACHUM: A fine opinion of your daughter you have.

PEACHUM: The worst. The very worst. A lump of sensuality, that’s what she is.

MRS PEACHUM: If so, she didn’t get it from you.

PEACHUM: Marriage! I expect my daughter to be to me as bread to the hungry. He leafs in the Book. It even says so in the Bible somewhere. Anyway marriage is disgusting. I’ll teach her to get married.

MRS PEACHUM: Jonathan, you’re just a barbarian.

PEACHUM: Barbarian! What’s this gentleman’s name?

MRS PEACHUM: They never call him anything but ‘the Captain’.

PEACHUM: So you haven’t even asked him his name? Interesting.

MRS PEACHUM: You don’t suppose we’d ask for a birth certificate when such a distinguished gentleman invites Polly and me to the Cuttlefish Hotel for a little hop.

PEACHUM: Where?

MRS PEACHUM: To the Cuttlefish Hotel for a little hop.

PEACHUM: Captain? Cuttlefish Hotel? Hm, hm, hm …

MRS PEACHUM: A gentleman who has always handled me and my daughter with kid gloves.

PEACHUM: Kid gloves!

MRS PEACHUM: Honest, he always does wear gloves, white ones: white kid gloves.

PEACHUM: I see. White gloves and a cane with an ivory handle and spats and patent-leather shoes and a charismatic personality and a scar …

MRS PEACHUM: On his neck. Isn’t there anyone you don’t know?

Filch crawls out from behind the screen.

FILCH: Mr Peachum, couldn’t you give me a few tips, I’ve always believed in having a system and not just shooting off my mouth any old how.

MRS PEACHUM: A system!

PEACHUM: He can be a half-wit. Come back this evening at six, we’ll teach you the rudiments. Now piss off!

FILCH: Thank you very much indeed, Mr Peachum. Many thanks. Goes out.

PEACHUM: Fifty per cent! – And now I’ll tell you who this gentleman with the gloves is – Mac the Knife! He runs up the stairs to Polly’s bedroom.

MRS PEACHUM: God in Heaven! Mac the Knife! Jesus! Gentle Jesus meek and mild – Polly! Where’s Polly? Peachum comes down slowly.

PEACHUM: Polly? Polly’s not come home. Her bed has not been slept in.

MRS PEACHUM: She’ll have gone to supper with that wool merchant. That’ll be it, Jonathan.

PEACHUM: Let’s hope to God it is the wool merchant!

Mr and Mrs Peachum step before the curtain and sing. Song lighting: golden glow. The organ is lit up. Three lamps are lowered from above on a pole, and the signs say:

THE ‘NO THEY CAN’T’ SONG

No, they can’t

Bear to be at home all tucked up tight in bed.

It’s fun they want

You can bet they’ve got some fancy notions brewing up instead.

So that’s your Moon over Soho

That is your infernal ‘d’you feel my heart beating?’ line.

That’s the old ‘wherever you go I shall be with you, honey’

When you first fall in love and the moonbeams shine.

No, they can’t

See what’s good for them and set their mind on it.

It’s fun they want

So they end up on their arses in the shit.

Then where’s your Moon over Soho?

What’s come of your infernal ‘d’you feel my heart beating?’ bit?

Where’s the old ‘wherever you go I shall be with you, honey’?

When you’re no more in love, and you’re in the shit?

2 Deep in the heart of Soho the bandit Mac the Knife is celebrating his marriage to Polly Peachum, the beggar king’s daughter.

Bare stable.

MATTHEW, known as Matt of the Mint, holds out his revolver and searches the stable with a lantern: Hey, hands up, anybody that’s here!

Macheath enters and makes a tour of inspection along the footlights.

MACHEATH: Well, is there anybody?

MATTHEW: Not a soul. Just the place for our wedding.

POLLY enters in wedding dress: But it’s a stable!

MAC: Sit on the feed-bin for the moment, Polly. To the audience: Today this stable will witness my marriage to Miss Polly Peachum, who has followed me for love in order to share my life with me.

MATTHEW: All over London they’ll be saying this is the most daring job you’ve ever pulled, Mac, enticing Mr Peachum’s only child from his home.

MAC: Who’s Mr Peachum?

MATTHEW: He’ll tell you he’s the poorest man in London.

POLLY: But you can’t be meaning to have our wedding here? Why, it is a common stable. You can’t ask the vicar to a place like this. Besides, it isn’t even ours. We really oughtn’t to start our new life with a burglary, Mac. Why, this is the biggest day of our life.

MAC: Dear child, everything shall be done as you wish. We can’t have you embarrassed in any way. The trimmings will be here in a moment.

MATTHEW: That’ll be the furniture.

Large vans are heard driving up. Half a dozen men come in, carrying carpets, furniture, dishes, etc., with which they transform the stable into an exaggeratedly luxurious room.1*

MAC: Junk.

The gentlemen put their presents down left, congratulate the bride and report to the bridegroom.2

JAKE known as Crook-fingered Jake: Congratulations! At 14 Ginger Street there were some people on the second floor. We had to smoke them out.

BOB known as Bob the Saw: Congratulations! A copper got done in the Strand.

MAC: Amateurs.

NED: We did all we could, but three people in the West End were past saving. Congratulations!

MAC: Amateurs and bunglers.

JIMMY: An old gent got hurt a bit, but I don’t think it’s anything serious. Congratulations.

MAC: My orders were: avoid bloodshed. It makes me sick to think of it. You’ll never make business men! Cannibals, perhaps, but not business men!

WALTER known as Dreary Walt: Congratulations. Only half an hour ago, Madam, that harpsichord belonged to the Duchess of Somerset.

POLLY: What is this furniture anyway?

MAC: How do you like the furniture, Polly?

POLLY in tears: Those poor people, all for a few sticks of furniture.

MAC: And what furniture! Junk! You have a perfect right to be angry. A rosewood harpsichord along with a renaissance sofa. That’s unforgivable. What about a table?

WALTER: A table?

They lay some planks over the bins.

POLLY: Oh, Mac, I’m so miserable! I only hope the vicar doesn’t come.

MATTHEW: Of course he’ll come. We gave him exact directions.

WALTER introduces the table: A table!

MAC seeing Polly in tears: My wife is very much upset. Where are the rest of the chairs? A harpsichord and the happy couple has to sit on the floor! Use your heads! For once I’m having a wedding, and how often does that happen? Shut up, Dreary! And how often does it happen that I leave you to do something on your own? And when I do you start by upsetting my wife.

NED: Dear Polly …

MAC knocks his hat off his head3: ‘Dear Polly’! I’ll bash your head through your kidneys with your ‘dear Polly’, you squirt. Have you ever heard the like? ‘Dear Polly!’ I suppose you’ve been to bed with her?

POLLY: Mac!

NED: I swear …

WALTER: Dear madam, if any items of furniture should be lacking, we’ll be only too glad to go back and …

MAC: A rosewood harpsichord and no chairs. Laughs. Speaking as a bride, what do you say to that?

POLLY: It could be worse.

MAC: Two chairs and a sofa and the bridal couple has to sit on the floor.

POLLY: Something new, I’d say.

MAC sharply: Get the legs sawn off this harpsichord! Go on!

FOUR MEN saw the legs off the harpsichord and sing:

Bill Lawgen and Mary Syer

Were made man and wife a week ago.

When it was over and they exchanged a kiss

He was thinking ‘Whose wedding dress was this?’

While his name was one thing she’d rather like to know.

Hooray!

WALTER: The finished article, madam: there’s your bench.

MAC: May I now ask the gentlemen to take off those filthy rags and put on some decent clothes? This isn’t just anybody’s wedding, you know. Polly, may I ask you to look after the fodder?

POLLY: Is this our wedding feast? Was the whole lot stolen, Mac?

MAC: Of course. Of course.

POLLY: I wonder what you will do if there’s a knock at the door and the sheriff steps in.

MAC: I’ll show you what your husband will do in that situation.

MATTHEW: It couldn’t happen today. The mounted police are all sure to be in Daventry. They’ll be escorting the Queen back to town for Friday’s Coronation.

POLLY: Two knives and fourteen forks! One knife per chair.

MAC: What incompetence! That’s the work of apprentices, not experienced men! Haven’t you any sense of style? Fancy not knowing the difference between Chippendale and Louis Quatorze.

The gang comes back. The gentlemen are now wearing fashionable evening dress, but unfortunately their movements are not in keeping with it.

WALTER: We only wanted to bring the most valuable stuff. Look at that wood! Really first class.

MATTHEW: Ssst! Ssst! Permit us, Captain …

MAC: Polly, come here a minute.

Mac and Polly assume the pose of a couple prepared to receive congratulations.

MATTHEW: Permit us, Captain, on the greatest day of your life, in the full bloom of your career, or rather the turning point, to offer you our heartiest and at the same time most sincere congratulations, etcetera. That posh talk don’t half make me sick. So to cut a long story short – Shakes Mac’s hand. – keep up the good work, old mate.

MAC: Thank you, that was kind of you, Matthew.

MATTHEW shaking Polly’s hand after embracing Mac with emotion: It was spoken from the heart, all right! So as I was saying, keep it up, old china, I mean – Grinning – the good work of course.

Roars of laughter from the guests. Suddenly Mac with a deft movement sends Matthew

to the floor.

MAC: Shut your trap. Keep that filth for Kitty, she’s the kind of slut that appreciates it.

POLLY : Mac, don’t be so vulgar.

MATTHEW: Here, I don’t like that. Calling Kitty a slut … Stands up with difficulty.

MAC: Oh, so you don’t like that?

MATTHEW: And besides, I never use filthy language with her. I respect Kitty too much. But maybe you wouldn’t understand that, the way you are. You’re a fine one to talk about filth. Do you think Lucy didn’t tell me the things you’ve told her? Compared to that, I’m driven snow.

Mac looks at him.

JAKE: Cut it out, this is a wedding. They pull him away.

MAC: Fine wedding, isn’t it, Polly? Having to see trash like this around you on the day of your marriage. You wouldn’t have thought your husband’s friends would let him down. Think about it.

POLLY: I think it’s nice.

ROBERT: Blarney. Nobody’s letting you down. What’s a difference of opinion between friends? Kitty’s as good as the next girl. But now bring out your wedding present, mate.

ALL: Yes, hand it over!

MATTHEW offended: Here.

POLLY: Oh, a wedding present. How kind of you, Mr Matt of the Mint. Look, Mac, what a lovely nightgown.

MATTHEW: Another bit of filth, eh, Captain?

MAC: Forget it. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings on this festive occasion.

WALTER: What do you say to this? Chippendale!

He unveils an enormous Chippendale grandfather clock.

MAC: Quatorze.

POLLY: It’s wonderful. I’m so happy. Words fail me. You’re so unbelievably kind. Oh, Mac, isn’t it a shame we’ve no flat to put it in?

MAC: Hm, it’s a start in the right direction. The great thing is to get started. Thank you kindly, Walter. Go on, clear the stuff away now. Food!

JAKE while the others start setting the table: Trust me to come empty-handed again. Intensely to Polly: Believe me, young lady, I find it most distressing.

POLLY: It doesn’t matter in the least, Mr Crook-finger Jake.

JAKE: Here are the boys flinging presents right and left, and me standing here like a fool. What a situation to be in! It’s always the way with me. Situations! It’s enough to make your hair stand on end. The other day I meet Low-Dive Jenny; well, I say, you old cow

…

Suddenly he sees Mac standing behind him and goes off without a word.

MAC leads Polly to her place: This is the best food you’ll taste today, Polly. Gentlemen!

All sit down to the wedding feast.4

NED indicating the china: Beautiful dishes. Savoy Hotel.

JAKE: The plover’s eggs are from Selfridge’s. There was supposed to be a bucket of foie gras. But Jimmy ate it on the way, he was mad because it had a hole in it.

WALTER: We don’t talk about holes in polite society.

JIMMY: Don’t bolt your eggs like that, Ned, not on a day like this.

MAC: Couldn’t somebody sing something? Something splendiferous?

MATTHEW choking with laughter: Something splendiferous? That’s a first-class word. He sits down in embarrassment under Mac’s withering glance.

MAC knocks a bowl out of someone’s hand: I didn’t mean us to start eating yet. Instead of seeing you people wade straight into the trough, I would have liked something from the heart. That’s what other people do on this sort of occasion.

JAKE: What, for instance?

MAC: Am I supposed to think of everything myself? I’m not asking you to put on an opera. But you might have arranged for something else besides stuffing your bellies and making filthy jokes. Oh well, it’s a day like this that you find out who your friends are.

POLLY: The salmon is marvellous, Mac.

NED: I bet you’ve never eaten anything like it. You get that every day at Mac the Knife’s. You’ve landed in the honey pot all right. That’s what I’ve always said: Mac is the right match for a girl with a feeling for higher things. As I was saying to Lucy only yesterday.

POLLY: Lucy? Mac, who is Lucy?

JAKE embarrassed: Lucy? Oh, nothing serious, you know.

Matthew has risen; standing behind Polly, he is waving his arms to shut Jake up.

POLLY sees him: Do you want something? Salt perhaps …? What were you saying, Mr Jake?

JAKE: Oh, nothing, nothing at all. The main thing I wanted to say really was nothing at all. I’m always putting my foot in it.

MAC: What have you got in your hand, Jake?

JAKE: A knife, Boss.

MAC: And what have you got on your plate?

JAKE: A trout, Boss.

MAC: I see. And with the knife you are eating the trout, are you not? It’s incredible. Did

you ever see the like of it, Polly? Eating his fish with a knife! Anybody who does that is just a plain swine, do you get me, Jake? Think about it. You’ll have your hands full, Polly, trying to turn trash like this into a human being. Have you boys got the least idea what that is?

WALTER: A human being or a human pee-ing?

POLLY: Really, Mr Walter!

MAC: So you won’t sing a song, something to brighten up the day? Has it got to be a miserable gloomy day like any other? And come to think of it, is anybody guarding the door? I suppose you want me to attend to that myself too? Do you want me on this day of days to guard the door so you lot can stuff your bellies at my expense?

WALTER sullenly: What do you mean at your expense?

JIMMY: Stow it, Walter boy. I’m on my way. Who’s going to come here anyway? Goes out.

JAKE: A fine joke on a day like this if all the wedding guests were pulled in.

JIMMY rushes in: Hey, Captain. The cops!

WALTER: Tiger Brown!

MATTHEW: Nonsense, it’s the Reverend Kimball.

Kimball enters.

ALL roar: Good evening, Reverend Kimball!

KIMBALL: So I’ve found you after all. I find you in a lowly hut, a humble place but your own.

MAC: Property of the Duke of Devonshire.

POLLY: Good evening, Reverend. Oh, I’m so glad that on the happiest day of our life you …

MAC: And now I request a rousing song for the Reverend Kimball.

MATTHEW: How about Bill Lawgen and Mary Syer?

JAKE: Good. Bill Lawgen might be just the thing.

KIMBALL: Be nice if you’d do a little number, boys.

MATTHEW: Let’s have it, gentlemen.

Three men rise and sing hesitantly, weakly and uncertainly:

WEDDING SONG FOR THE LESS WELL-OFF

Bill Lawgen and Mary Syer

Were made man and wife a week ago

(Three cheers for the happy couple: hip, hip, hooray!)

When it was over and they exchanged a kiss

He was thinking ‘Whose wedding dress was this?’

While his name was one thing she’d rather like to know.

Hooray!

Do you know what your wife’s up to? No!

Do you like her sleeping round like that? No!

Three cheers for the happy couple: Hip, hip, hooray!

Billy Lawgen told me recently

Just one part of her will do for me.

The swine.

Hooray!

MAC: Is that all? Penurious!

MATTHEW chokes again: Penurious is the word, gentlemen.

MAC: Shut your trap!

MATTHEW: Oh, I only meant no gusto, no fire, and so on.

POLLY: Gentlemen, if none of you wishes to perform, I myself will sing a little song; it’s an imitation of a girl I saw once in some twopenny-halfpenny dive in Soho. She was washing the glasses, and everybody was laughing at her, and then she turned to the guests and said things like the things I’m going to sing to you. Right. This is a little bar, I want you to think of it as filthy. She stood behind it morning and night. This is the bucket and this is the rag she washed the glasses with. Where you are sitting, the customers were sitting laughing at her. You can laugh too, to make it exactly the same; but if you don’t want to, you don’t have to. She starts pretending to wash glasses, muttering to herself. Now, for instance, one of them – it might be you – Pointing at Walter – says: Well, when’s your ship coming in, Jenny?

WALTER: Well, when’s your ship coming in, Jenny?

POLLY: And another says – you, for instance: Still washing up glasses, Jenny the pirate’s bride?

MATTHEW: Still washing up glasses, Jenny the pirate’s bride?

POLLY: Good. And now I’ll begin.

Song lighting: golden glow. The organ is lit up. Three lamps are lowered from above on a pole, and the signs say:

PIRATE JENNY

Now you gents all see I’ve the glasses to wash.

When a bed’s to be made I make it.

You may tip me with a penny, and I’ll thank you very well

And you see me dressed in tatters, and this tatty old hotel

And you never ask how long I’ll take it.

But one of these evenings there will be screams from the harbour

And they’ll ask: what can all that screaming be?

And they’ll see me smiling as I do the glasses

And they’ll say: how she can smile beats me.

And a ship with eight sails and

All its fifty guns loaded

Has tied up at the quay.

They say: get on, dry your glasses, my girl

And they tip me and don’t give a damn.

And their penny is accepted, and their bed will be made

(Although nobody is going to sleep there, I’m afraid)

And they still have no idea who I am.

But one of these evenings there will be explosions from the harbour,

And they’ll ask: what kind of a bang was that?

And they’ll see me as I stand beside the window

And they’ll say: what has she got to smile at?

And that ship with eight sails and

All its fifty guns loaded

Will lay siege to the town.

Then you gents, you aren’t going to find it a joke

For the walls will be knocked down flat

And in no time the town will be rased to the ground.

Just one tatty old hotel will be left standing safe and sound

And they’ll ask: did someone special live in that?

Then there’ll be a lot of people milling round the hotel

And they’ll ask: what made them let that place alone?

And they’ll see me as I leave the door next morning

And they’ll say: don’t tell us she’s the one.

And that ship with eight sails and

All its fifty guns loaded

Will run up its flag.

And a hundred men will land in the bright midday sun

Each stepping where the shadows fall.

They’ll look inside each doorway and grab anyone they see

And put him in irons and then bring him to me

And they’ll ask: which of these should we kill?

In that noonday heat there’ll be a hush round the harbour

As they ask which has got to die.

And you’ll hear me as I softly answer: the lot!

And as the first head rolls I’ll say: hoppla!

And that ship with eight sails and

All its fifty guns loaded

Will vanish with me.

MATTHEW: Very nice. Cute, eh? The way the missus puts it across!

MAC: What do you mean nice? It’s not nice, you idiot! It’s art, it’s not nice. You did that marvellously, Polly. But it’s wasted on trash like this, if you’ll excuse me, your Reverence. In an undertone to Polly: Anyway, I don’t like you playacting; let’s not have any more of it.

Laughter at the table. The gang is making fun of the parson. What you got in your hand, your Reverence?

JAKE: Two knives, Captain.

MAC: What you got on your plate, your Reverence?

KIMBALL: Salmon, I think.

MAC: And with that knife you are eating the salmon, are you not?

JAKE: Did you ever see the like of it, eating fish with a knife? Anybody who does that is just a plain …

MAC: Swine. Do you understand me, Jake? Think about it.

JIMMY rushing in: Hey, Captain, coppers. The sheriff in person.

WALTER: Brown. Tiger Brown!

MAC: Yes, Tiger Brown, exactly. It’s Tiger Brown himself, the Chief Sheriff of London, pillar of the Old Bailey, who will now enter Captain Macheath’s humble abode. Think about it.

The bandits creep away.

JAKE: It’ll be the drop for us!

Brown enters.

MAC: Hullo, Jackie.

BROWN: Hullo, Mac! I haven’t much time, got to be leaving in a minute. Does it have to be somebody else’s stable? Why, this is breaking and entering again!

MAC: But Jackie, it’s such a good address. I’m glad you could come to old Mac’s wedding. Let me introduce my wife, née Peachum. Polly, this is Tiger Brown, what do you say, old man? Slaps him on the back. And these are my friends, Jackie, I imagine you’ve seen them all before.

BROWN pained: I’m here unofficially, Mac.

MAC: So are they. He calls them. They come in with their hands up. Hey, Jake.

BROWN: That’s Crook-fingered Jake. He’s a dirty dog.

MAC: Hey, Jimmy; hey, Bob; hey, Walter!

BROWN: Well, just for today I’ll turn a blind eye.

MAC: Hey, Ned; hey, Matthew.

BROWN: Be seated, gentlemen, be seated.

ALL: Thank you, sir.

BROWN: I’m delighted to meet my old friend Mac’s charming wife.

POLLY: Don’t mention it, sir.

MAC: Sit down, you old bugger, and pitch into the whisky! – Polly and gentlemen! You have today in your midst a man whom the king’s inscrutable wisdom has placed high above his fellow men and who has none the less remained my friend throughout the storms and perils, and so on. You know who I mean, and you too know who I mean, Brown. Ah, Jackie, do you remember how we served in India together, soldiers both of us? Ah, Jackie, let’s sing the Cannon Song right now.

They sit down on the table.

Song lighting: golden glow. The organ is lit up. Three lamps are lowered from above on a pole, and the signs say:

THE CANNON SONG

John was all present and Jim was all there

And Georgie was up for promotion.

Not that the army gave a bugger who they were

When confronting some heathen commotion.

The troops live under

The cannon’s thunder

From the Cape to Cooch Behar.

Moving from place to place

When they come face to face

With a different breed of fellow

Whose skin is black or yellow

They quick as winking chop him into beefsteak tartare.

Johnny found his whisky too warm

And Jim found the weather too balmy

But Georgie took them both by the arm

And said: never let down the army.

The troops live under

The cannon’s thunder

From the Cape to Cooch Behar.

Moving from place to place

When they come face to face

With a different breed of fellow

Whose skin is black or yellow

They quick as winking chop him into beefsteak tartare.

John is a write-off and Jimmy is dead

And they shot poor old Georgie for looting

But young men’s blood goes on being red

And the army goes on recruiting.

The troops live under

The cannon’s thunder

From the Cape to Cooch Behar.

Moving from place to place

When they come face to face

With a different breed of fellow

Whose skin is black or yellow

They quick as winking chop him into beefsteak tartare.

MAC: Though life with its raging torrent has carried us boyhood friends far apart, although our professional interests are very different, some people would go so far as to say

diametrically opposed, our friendship has come through unimpaired. Think about it. Castor and Pollux, Hector and Andromache, etcetera. Seldom have I, the humble bandit, well, you know what I mean, made even the smallest haul without giving him, my friend, a share, a substantial share, Brown, as a gift and token of my unswerving loyalty, and seldom has he, take that knife out of your mouth, Jake, the all-powerful police chief, staged a raid without sending me, his boyhood friend, a little tip-off. Well, and so on and so forth, it’s all a matter of give and take. Think about it. He takes Brown by the arm. Well, Jackie, old man, I’m glad you’ve come, I call that real friendship. Pause, because Brown has been looking sadly at a carpet. Genuine Shiraz.

BROWN: From the Oriental Carpet Company.

MAC: Yes, we never go anywhere else. Do you know, Jackie, I had to have you here today, I hope it’s not awkward for you in your position?

BROWN: You know, Mac, that I can’t refuse you anything. I must be going, I’ve really got so much on my plate; if the slightest thing should go wrong at the Queen’s Coronation …

MAC: See here, Jackie, my father-in-law is a revolting old bastard. If he tries to make trouble for me, is there anything on record against me at Scotland Yard?

BROWN: There’s nothing whatsoever on record against you at Scotland Yard.

MAC: I knew it.

BROWN: I’ve taken care of that. Good night.

MAC: Aren’t you fellows going to stand up?

BROWN to Polly: Best of luck. Goes out accompanied by Mac.

JAKE who along with Matthew and Walter has meanwhile been conferring with Polly: I must admit I couldn’t repress a certain alarm a while ago when I heard Tiger Brown was coming.

MATTHEW: You see, dear lady, we have contacts in the highest places.

WALTER: Yes, Mac always has some iron in the fire that the rest of us don’t even suspect. But we have our own little iron in the fire. Gentlemen, it’s half-past nine.

MATTHEW: And now comes the pièce de resistance.

All go upstage behind the carpet that conceals something. Mac enters.

MAC: I say, what’s going on?

MATTHEW: Hey, Captain, another little surprise.

Behind the curtain they sing the Bill Lawgen song softly and with much feeling. But at ‘his name was one thing she’d rather like to know’ Matthew pulls down the carpet and all go on with the song, bellowing and pounding on the bed that has been disclosed.

MAC: Thank you, friends, thank you.

WALTER: And now we shall quietly take our leave.

The gang go out.

MAC: And now the time has come for softer sentiments. Without them man is a mere beast of burden. Sit down, Polly.

Music.

MAC: Look at the moon over Soho.

POLLY: I see it, dearest. Feel my heart beating, my beloved.

MAC: I feel it, beloved.

POLLY: Where’er you go I shall be with you.

MAC: And where you stay, there too shall I be.

BOTH:

And though we’ve no paper to say we’re wed

And no altar covered with flowers

And nobody knows for whom your dress was made

And even the ring is not ours –

The platter off which you’ve been eating your bread

Give it one brief look; fling it far.

For love will endure or not endure

Regardless of where we are.

3 To Peachum, conscious of the hardness of the world, the loss of his daughter means utter ruin.

Peachum’s Outfitting Emporium for Beggars.

To the right Peachum and Mrs Peachum. In the doorway stands Polly in her coat and hat, holding her travelling bag.

MRS PEACHUM: Married? First you rig her fore and aft in dresses and hats and gloves and parasols, and when she’s cost as much as a sailing ship, she throws herself in the garbage like a rotten pickle. Are you really married?

Song lighting: golden glow. The organ is lit up. Three lamps are lowered from above on a pole and the signs say:

IN A LITTLE SONG POLLY GIVES HER PARENTS TO UNDERSTAND THAT SHE HAS MARRIED THE

BANDIT MACHEATH:

I once used to think, in my innocent youth

(And I once was as innocent as you)

That someone someday might come my way

And then how should I know what’s best to do?

And if he’d got money

And seemed a nice chap

And his workday shirts were white as snow

And if he knew how to treat a girl with due respect

I’d have to tell him: No.

That’s where you must keep your head screwed on

And insist on going slow.

Sure, the moon will shine throughout the night

Sure, the boat is on the river, tied up tight.

That’s as far as things can go.

Oh, you can’t lie back, you must stay cold at heart

Oh, you must not let your feelings show.

Oh, whenever you feel it might start

Ah, then your only answer’s: No.

The first one that came was a man of Kent

And all that a man ought to be.

The second one owned three ships down at Wapping

And the third was crazy about me.

And as they’d got money

And all seemed nice chaps

And their workday shirts were white as snow

And as they knew how to treat a girl with due respect

Each time I told them: No.

That’s where I still kept my head screwed on

And I chose to take it slow.

Sure, the moon could shine throughout the night

Sure, the boat was on the river, tied up tight

That’s as far as things could go.

Oh, you can’t lie back, you must stay cold at heart

Oh, you must not let your feelings show.

Oh, whenever you feel it might start

Ah, then your only answer’s: No.

But then one day, and that day was blue

Came someone who didn’t ask at all

And he went and hung his hat on the nail in my little attic

And what happened I can’t quite recall.

And as he’d got no money

And was not a nice chap

And his Sunday shirts, even, were not like snow

And as he’d no idea of treating a girl with due respect

I could not tell him: No.

That’s the time my head was not screwed on

And to hell with going slow.

Oh, the moon was shining clear and bright

Oh, the boat kept drifting downstream all that night

That was how it simply had to go.

Yes, you must lie back, you can’t stay cold at heart

In the end you have to let your feelings show.

Oh, the moment you know it must start

Ah, then’s no time for saying: No.

PEACHUM: So she’s associating with criminals. That’s lovely. That’s delightful.

MRS PEACHUM: If you’re immoral enough to get married, did it have to be a horse-thief and a highwayman? That’ll cost you dear one of these days! I ought to have seen it coming. Even as a child she had a swollen head like the Queen of England.

PEACHUM: So she’s really got married!

MRS PEACHUM: Yes, yesterday, at five in the afternoon.

PEACHUM: To a notorious criminal. Come to think of it, it shows that the fellow is really audacious. If I give away my daughter, the sole prop of my old age, why, my house will cave in and my last dog will run off. I’d think twice about giving away the dirt under my fingernails, it would mean risking starvation. If the three of us can get through the winter on one log of wood, maybe we’ll live to see the new year. Maybe.

MRS PEACHUM: What got into you? This is our reward for all we’ve done, Jonathan. I’m going mad. My head is swimming. I’m going to faint. Oh! She faints. A glass of Cordial Médoc.

PEACHUM: You see what you’ve done to your mother. Quick! Associating with criminals, that’s lovely, that’s delightful! Interesting how the poor woman takes it to heart. Polly brings in a bottle of Cordial Médoc. That’s the only consolation your poor mother has left.

POLLY: Go ahead, give her two glasses. My mother can take twice as much when she’s not quite herself. That will put her back on her feet. During the whole scene she looks very happy.

MRS PEACHUM wakes up: Oh, there she goes again, pretending to be so loving and sympathetic!

Five men enter.5

BEGGAR: I’m making a complaint, see, this thing is a mess, it’s not a proper stump, it’s a botch-up, and I’m not wasting my money on it.

PEACHUM: What do you expect? It’s as good a stump as any other; it’s just that you don’t keep it clean.

BEGGAR: Then why don’t I take as much money as the others? Naw, you can’t do that to me. Throws down the stump. If I wanted crap like this, I could cut off my real leg.

PEACHUM: What do you fellows want anyway? Is it my fault if people have hearts of flint? I can’t make you five stumps. In five minutes I can turn any man into such a pitiful wreck it would make a dog weep to see him. Is it my fault if people don’t weep? Here’s another stump for you if one’s not enough. But look after your equipment!