# The Beggar’s Opera — Character guide

> Key figures in The Beggar’s Opera by John Gay.

- [Captain Macheath](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_beggar_s_opera_se/characters/macheath.md): Macheath moves through taverns and Newgate alike with the swagger of a man who believes his courage and charisma will carry him through any scrape. He genuinely cares for the women he courts, yet his roving eye and taste
- [Polly Peachum](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_beggar_s_opera_se/characters/polly_peachum.md): Polly grows up in a household where crime is bookkeeping, yet she risks everything for love rather than profit, marrying Macheath behind her parents' backs. Her devotion is genuine but not naive: she knows her father's t
- [Lucy Lockit](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_beggar_s_opera_se/characters/lucy_lockit.md): Lucy was raised in the bar of Newgate, where her father taught her to score kisses like debts, and Macheath collected on every one. Now she finds herself pregnant, abandoned, and publicly humiliated by Polly's claim — a 
- [Mr. Peachum](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_beggar_s_opera_se/characters/peachum.md): Peachum sits at his account book sorting rogues into profit and loss, protecting the industrious and 'booking' the lazy for execution with the calm of a man auditing taxes. He sees all professions as variations on his ow
- [Mrs. Peachum](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_beggar_s_opera_se/characters/mrs_peachum.md): Mrs. Peachum shares her husband's trade and his ledger-minded view of the world, but her concern for Polly runs through the currency she understands best: reputation and money. She sees Macheath not as a romantic figure 
- [Lockit](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_beggar_s_opera_se/characters/lockit.md): Lockit governs Newgate with the same double capacity Peachum brings to thief-taking: he sells escapes, softens evidence, and keeps his own accounts, all while suspecting his partner of skimming. His relationship with Luc
- [Jenny Diver](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_beggar_s_opera_se/characters/jenny_diver.md): Jenny belongs to the chorus of 'Women of the Town' whose names — Coaxer, Trull, Vixen, Doxy — announce their trade, and she numbers among the many lovers Macheath keeps in addition to his wife Polly. Her presence sharpen
- [Diana Trapes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_beggar_s_opera_se/characters/diana_trapes.md): Mrs. Trapes sits at the crossroads of the play's two economies — sex and stolen property — running a house where goods and women are both for sale. As a fence and bawd she knows where bodies and valuables are hidden, whi
- [Suky Tawdry](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_beggar_s_opera_se/characters/suky_tawdry.md): A prostitute in the gang, appears in the tavern.
- [Ben Budge](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_beggar_s_opera_se/characters/ben_budge.md): Ben Budge is one of the named gang members — alongside Jemmy Twitcher, Crook-fingered Jack, and Matt of the Mint — who give Macheath's band its texture of camaraderie and menace. His loyalty to the captain is the loyalty
- [Matt of the Mint](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_beggar_s_opera_se/characters/matt_of_the_mint.md): Matt belongs to Macheath's gang, the brotherhood of road agents whose loyalty is tested the moment the reward money starts to talk. His nickname ties him to the Mint, the lawless precinct where debtors and criminals shel
- [Tom](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_beggar_s_opera_se/characters/tom.md): A highwayman, brother of Matt, appears in gang scenes.
- [Marybone](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_beggar_s_opera_se/characters/marybone.md): A minor character, possibly a location or person.
- [The Beggar](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_beggar_s_opera_se/characters/beggar.md): The Beggar appears in the frame, introducing the piece and returning to comment on it, so that the whole story of Peachum, Polly, and Macheath arrives already wrapped in a beggar's claim to authorship. His presence is a 

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_beggar_s_opera_se/characters