A bigger set of rogues than we here meet with it would be impossible to imagine, but nos hæc novimus esse nihil and we laugh undisturbed for once by any moral twinges. "All Men are thieves in love, and like a woman the better for being another's property": that is the sort of proverb we like to hear in such a play: the more we hear the merrier we grow.
How amazingly appropriate too are the songs: when Mrs Peachum learns that Polly is really married to Macheath one feels that there was no other way for her but to burst out into song:
"Our Polly is a sad Slut! nor heeds what we have taught her.
I wonder any Man alive will ever rear a Daughter!
For she must have both Hoods and Gowns, and Hoops to swell her Pride,
With Scarfs and Stays, and Gloves and Lace; and she will have Men beside;
And when she's drest with Care and Cost, all tempting, fine and gay,
As Men should serve a Cowcumber, she flings herself away."
"Do you think your Mother and I should have liv'd comfortably so long together, if ever we had been married?" roars Peachum in a fine frenzy.
"Can you support the Expence of a Husband, Hussy, in Gaming, Drinking and Whoring? Have you Money enough to carry on the daily Quarrels of Man and Wife about who shall squander most?... Why, thou foolish Jade, thou wilt be as ill-us'd, and as much neglected, as if thou hadst married a Lord," shrieks her mother.
Polly confesses that she loves her husband and Mrs Peachum faints at the awful news; revived by a double dose of cordial, she joins her daughter in one of the most delicious songs in the play.
"O Polly, you might have toy'd and kist.
By keeping Men off, you keep them on.
Polly
But he so teaz'd me,
And he so pleas'd me,
What I did, you must have done."
Her father then suggests that Polly has Macheath "peach'd" at the next Sessions, so that she can become a rich widow, and leaves her to digest the unpalatable idea. Macheath comes in and Polly urges him to fly, which he does.