As a result of which the two girls turn on each other and Peachum enters, giving Macheath a chance to reassure Lucy of his love for her, so she gets the keys and lets him escape.
We then have an exquisite passage between Peachum and Mrs Trapes, beginning in an inimitable vein:
Peachum. One may know by your Kiss, that your Ginn is excellent.
Trapes. I was always very curious in my Liquors.... Fill it up—I take as large Draughts of Liquor, as I did of Love.... I hate a Flincher in either.
Lucy, finding that she has released Macheath, only to let him fly to Polly, resolves to poison her with rat's-bane mixed in her gin, which Polly refuses: "Brandy and men (though women love them ever so well) are always taken by us with some Reluctance—unless 'tis in private."
Macheath is again captured, this time in a gaming-house, and sings a great number of songs (one to the tune of Sally in our Alley) in the "Condemn'd Hold" while he drowns his sorrows in drink. To send the audience away in a good humour he is reprieved at the last moment and rejoins his doxie in a dance.
Such is the substance of a play which few people took the trouble to read before they were unexpectedly given the chance of seeing it acted at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith.
But whether we read it or see it, there are certain points about it which make it perennially worth reading and worth seeing.
It is free from sentimentality, it is full of robust sense, and clears the air once and for all from the taint of prurience that has fallen upon us. The irony of it is mirth-provoking and delicious. It is a racy and true picture of human nature stripped naked. There is no savagery, only rascally good humour, true gaiety and buoyant vitality. As an antidote to depression or bad temper it would be hard to think of any quicker cut back to the joy of life.
And the best of it is that there are dozens of other plays equally enjoyable hidden away in the treasure-house of old English plays, waiting for you to unearth and rediscover them.