1. John Gay was an English poet and dramatist and member of the Scriblerus Club.
18 Facts About John Gay
1. 2.
John Gay is best remembered for The Beggar's Opera, a ballad opera.
3.
In 1714, John Gay wrote The Shepherd's Week, a series of six pastorals drawn from English rustic life.
4.
John Gay's pastorals achieved this goal and his ludicrous pictures of the English country lads and their loves were found to be entertaining on their own account.
5.
In 1714 John Gay was appointed secretary to the Earl of Clarendon the new British ambassador to the Electorate of Hanover through the influence of Swift.
6.
The Hanoverian succession led to the ousting of the Harley Ministry and establishment of the Whig oligarchy and John Gay never held a government post again.
7.
John Gay had assistance from Pope and John Arbuthnot, but they allowed it to be assumed that Gay was the sole author.
8.
John Gay, disregarding the advice of Pope and others of his friends, invested all his money in South Sea stock, and, holding on to the end of the South Sea Bubble, he lost everything.
9.
John Gay's friends did not fail him at this juncture.
10.
John Gay had patrons in William Pulteney, afterwards Earl of Bath, in the third Earl of Burlington, who constantly entertained him at Chiswick or at Burlington House, and in the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry.
11.
John Gay was a frequent visitor with Pope, and received unvarying kindness from William Congreve and John Arbuthnot.
12.
John Gay was offered the situation of gentleman-usher to the Princess Louisa, who was still a child.
13.
John Gay refused this offer, all his friends seemingly having regarded it- "for no very obvious reason"- as an indignity.
14.
Under cover of the thieves and highwaymen who figured in it was disguised a satire on society, for John Gay made it plain that in describing the moral code of his characters he had in mind the corruptions of the governing class.
15.
Swift is said to have suggested the subject, and Pope and Arbuthnot were constantly consulted while the work was in progress, but John Gay must be regarded as the sole author.
16.
John Gay wrote a sequel, Polly, relating the adventures of Polly Peachum in the West Indies; its production was forbidden by the Lord Chamberlain, no doubt through the influence of Walpole.
17.
In 1730 John Gay's substantially rewritten version of his 1713 play The Wife of Bath appeared at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, lasting for three nights.
18.
The epitaph on his tomb is by Pope, and is followed by John Gay's own mocking couplet:.