Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

England's most popular musical of the 18th century, "The Beggar's Opera", was written by John Gay and produced by John Rich. The success of their long-running co-operation was said to have made "Gay rich and Rich gay". Simple in its nursery-rhyme structure, "How D'You Do" was a favourite with audiences because the last two lines sound like a cock crowing, something that singers emphasized during performances:

How D'You Do

Before the barn-door crowing
The cock by hens attended,
Her eyes around him throwing,
Stands for a while suspended:
Then one he singles from the crew
And cheers the happy hen,
With how do you do and how do you do,
And how do you do again.

John Gay (1685-1732)

"The Beggar's Opera" was set in the London criminal underworld, and the idea was provided by Swift, who suggested that the morals of the people in Newgate Prison did not differ so much from the rest of society. In the opera, the receiver of stolen goods, Peachum, has a profitable business arrangement with Macheath, a highwayman. However, when Peachum's daughter Polly falls in love with the gangster, the treacherous receiver informs against the highwayman, who is then imprisoned in Newgate. There, the warden's daughter Lucy Lockit falls for him and with her help, Macheath escapes. Although recaptured in a brothel, he manages to avoid the gallows. "The Beggar's Opera" was the basis for Kurt Weil and Bertolt Brecht's classical work Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera).