Unmasking Polly: Race and Disguise in Eighteenth-Century Plantation Space

Abstract

John Gays The Beggars Opera has influenced popular culture since its debut. Its 1729 sequel, Polly, has been understudied by literary critics, perhaps because of its suppression in Gays lifetime. However, Polly offers scholars new views on British imperialism before an active abolition movement in Britain. Gay confronts the evils of colonialism through his theatrical use of disguise. While other Caribbean plays of the period allow white characters to reinvent themselves abroad, in Polly disguise only intensifies the self, while the higher stakes of plantation space are where the characters meet the fates originally designated for them in The Beggars Opera. Although the play contains a slave rebellion and many white characters referred to as slaves, the absence of actual Black characters suggests an inability to deal directly with the effects of chattel slavery on Britain and its victims as well as the impossibility of Black guilt in a system that otherwise indicts all participants.