The Threepenny Opera Act II, Scene III Summary & Analysis

Summary

Brown walks into the jail alone and expresses his fervent wish that Macheath not be caught. Just then, the constables bring in Macheath and lock him in his cell. He glares silently at Brown, who begs Macheath to say something. Finally Brown breaks down in tears and exits. As soon as Brown goes, Macheath turns to the audience and comments on how he treated Brown. Macheath describes how he thought about shouting at Brown but decided instead that a cold stare would work better. Macheath adds that he learned the trick of glaring at someone from the Bible.

Constable Smith enters with handcuffs, and Macheath politely asks if he may request a more comfortable pair, taking out his checkbook. He writes Smith a check for fifty pounds in exchange for wearing no handcuffs at all. While writing, Macheath ruminates that if Brown finds out Macheath has been sleeping with Brown’s daughter Lucy, then he will really be in for it. Macheath then launches into the “The Secret of Gracious Living.” In the first verse, Macheath describes starving artists and intellectuals who live their lives of poverty in pursuit of an ideal. He explains that this life is not for him because it is not really living. The second verse describes the ambitious types who commit daring acts and brag about their exploits. But at night they climb into barren beds with their frigid wives and can only dream of everything before them. He concludes by noting that although these types of people have plenty, they are not happy.

The ballad concludes. Lucy enters, visibly pregnant. She launches into Macheath, who protests that a woman should not say such things to her man. She says she has heard about Polly. He insists that he never married Polly but just kissed her and then she told everyone they were married. He offers to make Lucy an honest woman by officially marrying her.

Just then, Polly enters. She rushes to Macheath, asking why he did not flee. When he does not respond, she becomes worried. Lucy calls her a slut, and over Macheath’s protestations, the two women begin tearing into each other. They sing the “Jealousy Duet,” in which each woman insults the other and brags about how Macheath only truly loves her.

When the song ends, Macheath tells Lucy to calm down. He then turns on Polly and asks why she keeps talking about them being married. Polly does not accept this sudden change in behavior and insists to Lucy that she is his wife. The confrontation between the two women escalates. Mrs. Peachum enters to fetch Polly away from the jail, smacks her daughter, and drags her away while she is still calling for Macheath.

With Polly gone, Macheath thanks Lucy for helping him out in a tight spot. He tells Lucy the only reason he was not mean to Polly was because he felt sorry for her. Macheath and Lucy exchange sweet nothings, and then he asks her to bring him his hat and cane. After she tosses the cane and hat into Macheath’s cell, she leaves. Constable Smithwalks into Macheath’s cell to demand that Macheath give up his cane. Armed with a chair and crowbar, Smith chases Macheath around the cell, but Macheath slides past him and escapes.

Brown enters and expresses his relief upon seeing that Macheath is gone. Then Peachum enters, expecting to collect his reward for capturing Macheath. Brown apologizes and tells Peachum that there is nothing he can do about Macheath getting away. Peachum points out that with Macheath out causing trouble, the coronation will be a disaster for the police. He tells Brown about an event in Egyptian times, when a police chief failed to keep the lower classes in check during a coronation. The new queen left poisonous snakes to feed on his chest, he recounts. Peachum strongly hints to Brown that unless the sheriff captures Macheath, Peachum will unleash chaos throughout the city. Brown is horrified and realizes he must capture Macheath to save his reputation as the sheriff.

Macheath and Jenny sing the “Second Threepenny-Finale.” The song is a direct reprimand to moralists who demand that all humans not sin. The characters explain in the first verse that the self-righteous should realize that food is the first thing to be concerned with. Morals can only have a place in the world once people are not starving. The chorus describes how society thrives through the oppression of millions. The second verse reaffirms the same theme, emphasizing the bankruptcy of moral police who would judge one girl taking off her clothes as art and another girl taking them off as pornography. What is important, they sing again, is to make sure no one is starving. They continue to sing that as long as humankind lives through the oppression of millions, no one can talk about morals with a straight face.

Analysis

Brown, Macheath, and Peachum are motivated by self-interest. Brown appears saddened by betrayal of Macheath, but his guilty feelings do not stop him from acting in his own self-interest again. From Brown’s reaction to Macheath escaping, it is clear that Brown did not fail Macheath out of anger or disloyalty but simply because he was in a weak position. Faced with the possibility of being humiliated on the day of the coronation by Peachum’s beggars, he quickly folds. The preservation of his own reputation comes before any friend. Macheath, in turn, quickly ditches Polly without a second thought once he sees that Lucy can help him out of jail. He has no connection to Polly other than his physical desire, and he also does not want the two girls to know he has been seeing them both. By not telling them the truth, Macheath acts in his own best interest. If Macheath really loved Lucy and Polly as he told them he does, he would be honest with them. Unlike the other characters, Macheath does not struggle between self-interest and love because he only loves himself. Peachum, meanwhile, will stop at nothing to defend his own interests, even if it means creating chaos throughout the city. This action was not decided because Peachum wants to disrupt the coronation. But by unleashing his beggars, Peachum can save his business and collect extra money for Macheath’s capture.

Macheath’s actions display two examples of the alienation effect. Later in the scene, when Macheath is talking with Lucy, he tells her that he would like to owe her his life, and she asks him to say this line again to her. This exchange could be played naturalistically, as sweet banter between two old lovers. The other example comes earlier in the scene, when, after staring down Brown, Macheath steps out of the scene and speaks to the audience directly to comment on what he just did. Again the audience sees that they are watching actors and that none of what they saw happen in the play is really happening. These moments break the audience’s emotional connection to the performers and leave them free to evaluate the characters and events of the play critically.

Like Peachum, Macheath takes verses and lessons from the Bible and uses them nefariously. By stepping out of the scene to comment on what he did to Brown, Macheath emphasizes how the Bible’s lessons can be bent to any purpose. Macheath describes that he glared at Brown until Brown could not take the look any longer and broke into tears. The irony is that Macheath learned this trick from the Bible, and he happily notes his victory over Brown. The point is that the Bible can be put to any use one assigns to it. The ironic hero (Macheath) and the ironic villain (Peachum) have more in common than they think when they pull verses and “tricks” from the Bible. The Bible’s supposedly clear moral prescriptions are actually malleable based on interpretation: Peachum uses biblical quotations to justify his exploitation. Macheath reads the Bible to learn how to be a tougher guy.

Peachum’s made-up example about Egyptian history displays his desire to grasp any means to get ahead in the world. The tale that Peachum tells is factually incorrect in two ways: Queen Semiramis was Assyrian, not Egyptian, and she lived in the nine century b.c., not the fifteenth. The tale of the snakes appears to be false, an idea created off the top of Peachum’s head to bolster his argument. This falsity is supported by Peachum’s uncertainty as to whether the events took place in Cairo or Nineveh (an Assyrian city in what is now Iraq). The hesitation Peachum expresses about where the events took place creates skepticism from the audience. The doubt in turn forces the question of whether the story is at all accurate. Peachum intends to frighten Brown with the story so that Brown will continue his search for Macheath; therefore embellishing the details goes along with the story. After all, Peachum seems to go through any means necessary to have Macheath captured, so exaggerating or falsifying the events of the story is in keeping with this goal.

The second finale further develops the arbitrariness of values that is at the center of the play. Traditional moral values would attempt to purge the characters of personal sins such as adultery, violence, gluttony, and greed. To sort out those problems, however, Macheath argues that one first has to sort out the problem of the starving millions, whom society continues to profit from. So long as one lives in a society in which the pursuit of self-interest is rewarded, the Peachums and the Macheaths alike will thrive. All the moralizing in the world will not change people from only thinking of themselves. As with the first finale, the argument is intentionally open-ended. This argument forces the audience to consider the situation and come up with a solution. The audience sees that most of the characters have turned to self-interest, and therefore, they are left to face the question of how to end the oppression that exists in society.