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.
