The Threepenny Opera

Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill, Elisabeth Hauptmann, Anja Hartl, John Willett, Ralph Manheim

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781350205291
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre Playwriting

One of Bertolt Brecht's best-loved and most performed plays, The Threepenny Opera was first staged in 1928 at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, Berlin (now the home of the Berliner Ensemble). Based on the eighteenth-century The Beggar's Opera by John Gay, the play is a satire on the bourgeois society of the Weimar Republic, but set 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. This new edition is published here in John Willett and Ralph Manhein's classic translation with commentary and notes by Anja Hartl.

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

Reverend Kimball

Filch

Ballad Singer

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

Scene One

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 blessing...