{\b John Gay}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: 1685

{\b Date of Death}.: 1732

{\b Works}.

English poet. His first poem 'Wine' (1708), appeared in a pamphlet on The 
Present State of Wit. His poem The Shepherd's Week (1714) showed great 
promise, and this was followed by the play The What d'ye Call it (1715) which 
described it as a 'tragi-comi-pastoral farce'. Later, after the first in his 
series of popular Fables (1727), he produced his great work The Beggar's Opera 
(1728), a ballad opera which ran for an unprecedented sixty two nights. Polly 
(1729), the sequel to his successful play was banned but published in book 
form. His other opera Achilles was produced after his death in 1733.

{\b Featured Works}.

'The Beggar's Opera', 'Black-Eyed Susan'.

{\b General Comment}.

John Gay was born in Barnstaple, Devon into a wealthy, non-conformist family. 
After being educated at Barnstaple Grammar School he was apprenticed, for a 
brief time, to a London silk mercer before returning home to Devon. 

He was appointed secretary to the Duchess of Monmouth in 1712 and produced the 
mock-heroic poem 'Rural Sports' 1713 dedicated to his friend Alexander Pope. 
He then worked with Pope and the satirist John Arbuthnot on the comedy Three 
Hours after Marriage (1717).

 
He then began suffering severe financial difficulties after the money he 
earned from his Poems (1720) was entirely lost through speculation in South 
Sea funds. Fortunately he was assisted by various patrons, the most important 
being the Duke of Queensbury who admitted Gay into his household and became 
his literary executor.

The Beggar's Opera (1728) is the work for which Gay is chiefly remembered. It 
was inspired by the writer Swift who commented that a pastoral set in Newgate 
Prison 'might make an odd pretty sort of thing'. Its great success seems to 
have owed much to its blend of satire (directed mainly at the then prime 
minister Sir Robert Walpole), sweet ballads, and scenes of genuine pathos. It 
was phenomenally successful but ultimately provoked Walpole into introducing 
the Licensing Act which put heavy restrictions on writers and led to a decline 
in eighteenth century drama.

In Gay's later years his health seems to have suffered as a result of 
continuing financial anxieties. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.