To them enter Beggar and Player

Play. But, honest friend, I hope you don’t intend that Macheath shall be really executed?

Beg. Most certainly, sir. To make the piece perfect, I was for doing strict poetical justice. Macheath is to be hanged, and for the other personages of the drama the audience must have supposed they were all either hanged or transported.

Play. Why then, friend, this is a downright deep tragedy. The catastrophe is manifestly wrong, for an opera must end happily.

Beg. Your objection, sir, is very just and is easily removed; for you must allow that in this kind of drama ’tis no matter how absurdly things are brought about. So, you rabble there, run and cry, A reprieve! Let the prisoner be brought back to his wives in triumph.

Play. All this we must do to comply with the taste of the town.

Beg. Through the whole piece you may observe such a similitude of manners in high and low life that it is difficult to determine whether, in the fashionable vices, the fine gentlemen imitate the gentlemen of the road, or the gentlemen of the road the fine gentlemen. Had the play remained as I at first intended, it would have carried a most excellent moral. ’Twould have shown that the lower sort of people have their vices in a degree as well as the rich, and that they are punished for them.

Re-enter Macheath, with rabble, etc.

Mac. So it seems I am not left to my choice, but must have a wife at last. Look ye, my dears, we will have no controversy now. Let us give this day to mirth, and I am sure she who thinks herself my wife will testify her joy by a dance.

All. Come, a dance, a dance!

Mac. Ladies, I hope you will give me leave to present a partner to each of you; and (if I may without offence) for this time I take Polly for mine—and for life, you slut, for we were really married. As for the rest— But at present keep your own secret. [To Polly.

[A dance]

Air.—Lumps of pudding, etc.

Chorus. But think of this maxim, etc.

[Exeunt omnes.