Theater, Archetypes, and Artifice Theme Analysis

During his lifetime, Bertolt Brecht became well-known as one of the foremost (and most experimentally-minded) practitioners of “epic theater”—a theatrical form in which the audience is constantly reminded of their role as spectators, and in which the play or opera makes frequent nods to its own dramatic structure. Throughout The Threepenny Opera, Brecht deepens the self-referential aesthetic of epic theater by employing the use of character archetypes which add to the moralistic, cheeky plot. Through the twinned use of archetypes and artifice—artifice in this instance representing the contrived nature of the opera’s plot, and the ways in which the work repeatedly recognizes itself as a construct—Brecht argues that theater should not be an institution of or for the bourgeoisie. Rather, it should be a way for common people to see themselves and their plights represented by the actors—a similarly working-class group of peers who are equally angry about the social, economic, and political injustices of the world.

All of Brecht’s theatrical works involve some measure of artifice—revealing the mechanics of theatrics, after all, is one of the key tenets of the epic theater movement. In The Threepenny Opera, however, Brecht also makes use of character archetypes—the slick gangster, the lovestruck ingenue, the “ginny” whore, the beggar, the corrupt policeman—to highlight the inequity inherent in theater: the very people the play is, or should be, for are often barred from seeing it due to being priced out or shunned from “polite” society. By creating an opera—traditionally regarded as a high art form—about and for the lower classes, Brecht put a radical message onstage: theater should be a form for the masses rather than the privileged few. To hammer home his message, he created a play about the London underworld, and the beggars, thieves, and prostitutes who populate it. Many of the characters in the play are archetypes or even stereotypes, rendered in broad strokes so that they translate to less-educated audiences as well as lampoon the idea that the bourgeoisie often see those of the lower classes as one-dimensional people. Macheath, for instance, is a slick and womanizing gangster. Polly Peachum is a virtuous, virginal ingenue constantly insecure about her position in her lover’s heart. Filch, a street beggar, has a sob story about his life which is so hackneyed and predictable that Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum is able to finish his sentences for him as he tells it. The sheriff, Tiger Brown, is stereotypically corrupt—he willingly takes bribes from Macheath, and as Macheath readies himself to go to the gallows toward the end of the play, Brown even takes out his notebook to settle accounts with the gangster and get paid what he’s owed. Brecht trades in these stereotypes—which might, in another context, be seen as harmful or demeaning—in order to signal contempt not for the class of people on which his play focuses, but for the class of people who might come to the theater to be entertained by flat, satirical portrayals of them. In a rousing number toward the end of the opera, “Ballad in Which Macheath Begs Pardon of All,” Macheath sings about how “wenches,” “urchins,” “outlaws, bandits, burglars, gunmen [as well as] abortionists and pimps” deserve “mercy one and all.” Brecht’s sympathies are made crystal clear in this number—while coppers are “sons of bitches” and those “who will live long and die [comfortably] in bed” tend to “harden [their] hearts” against the less fortunate, the lower classes are made up of individuals who are worthy of mercy, deliverance, justice, and kindness. Though Brecht’s outlook on society’s capacity to give those things to the overlooked and downtrodden is decidedly less than optimistic, he subversively uses the framework of epic theatre to tell a tale about the inherent worthiness of those people whom bourgeoisie society ordinarily “cannot bear to see.” 

In The Threepenny Opera, Brecht employs the constructs of epic theatre to create a theater piece which actively forces audiences to feel complicit in the crime, corruption, and calamity unfolding before them. At the same time, he seeks to constantly remind his viewer that they are sitting comfortably in a theater watching others sing and dance for their entertainment as a way of lampooning the activities and diversions of the bourgeoisie. The result is a political statement about the role of art in activism, the place of arbitrary class distinctions in corruption, and the possibility of revolutionizing society from the inside out and the bottom up.