Monday, December 19, 2011

As we haven´t spoken a lot about The Beggar´s Opera up to now, I have decided to write this post about my role in this play, which is the vocabulary enricher, since probably I´m not going to have time to speak about it in class and I would like to share what I have found with all of you. I have concentrated my search on the vocabulary related to women, because they are very important through the whole play.
Page 2615: Peachum (about women in general): he calls women "hen partridges" (it means a short-tailed game bird with mainly brown plumage; in Spanish "perdiz") obviously in a pejorative way.
Page 2617: Peachum: 
he calls his own daughter "a plague".
he uses the word "wench" (it means woman. It´s an archaic form to say "woman, girl").
Page 2618: Mrs. Peachum: she disagress with her husband regarding her daughter and the matter of marriage and she sings a song about women. She compares them to:
"(golden) ore" (here I´m not sure if it means: a naturally ocurring solid material from which a metal or valuable mineral can be extracted profitably; in Spanish, "mineral"; or if it is a monetary unit of Sweden, equal to one hundredth of a krona).
"guinea" (it is a former British gold coin with a value of 21 shillings).
Page 2619: Polly (about women in general): she says:
"a woman knows how to be `mercenary´" (it means primarily concerned with making money at the expense of ethics; in Spanish "materialista, interesado").
"common" (it means common land, common law, but also a name for a prostitute).
Page 2620: Mrs. Peachum (about her daughter): 
"slut" (it means prostitute).
"hussy" (it means an impudent or immoral girl or woman).
Page 2622: Peachum (within the song): "whore" (another way to say "prostitute").
Page 2628: Matt: he uses the word "bawd" (it means a woman who is in charge of a brothel; in Spanish "patrona de burdel").
Page 2630: in this page a scene where there are a lot of words related to women starts, but some of these words have been used and explained previously. Some new words that Macheath uses are:
"quality" (it means women of high social position).
"coquette" (it means a flirtatious woman).
Page 2632: Jenny (within the song): "gypsies" (it means a member of a travelling  people speaking a language related to Hindi, and traditionally living by itinerant trade; in Spanish "gitana").
Macheath (when he is captured): "beast, jades, jilts, harpies, furies, whores" (all of them are disqualifying words for women).
Page 2643: Lockit (to his daughter): "strumpet" (it means "prostitute").
That´s all I have found related to women. I hope it is useful in order to understand better the play.