John Gayジョン・ゲイ / 1685-1732

イングランドの詩人、劇作家。南西部デヴォン (Devon) 州バーンスタプル (Barnstaple) に生まれる。1720年出版の詩集 Poems on Several Occasions によって1,000ポンドを越える収入を得たゲイは、それをそっくり南洋貿易会社に投資するが、有名な ‘South Sea Bubble’ がはじけて挫折する。しかしポープ (Alexander Pope, 1688-1744) やスウィフト (Jonathan Swift, 1667-1745) ら友人たちの援助で徐々に立ち直り、スウィフトから盗賊たちを主人公にする ‘Newgate pastoral’ を書くように薦められて出来たのが、かの有名な TheBeggar’s Opera (1728) である。初演の舞台となった Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre のオーナーは John Rich (?1692-1761) であったが、“The Beggar’s Opera made Rich gay and Gay rich.” と当時言いはやされた。

 

このオペラの前口上で、乞食が登場して次のように述べる。

 

“This piece I own was originally writ for the celebrating the marriage of James Chanter and Moll Lay, two most excellent ballad-singers. [. . .] I hope I may be forgiven that I have not made my opera throughout unnatural, like those in vogue; for I have no recitative; excepting this, as I have consented to have neither Prologue nor Epilogue, it must be allowed an opera in all its forms.” [Eighteenth-Century Plays, selected with an Introduction by John Hampden (London, 1928) 111]

 

ゲイは、当時ロンドンの舞台を席巻していたイタリアオペラに対抗して、イギリス伝統のバラッドによる ‘ballad opera’ を目指したのである。流行のブロードサイド・バラッドのメロディに合わせて、ゲイは数々の自作のバラッドを登場人物にうたわせた。Albert B. Friedman は ‘ballad opera’ の貢献について、‘One certain result of the ballad opera’s popularity was the removal of some of the opprobrium that attached to the term “ballad”’ [Albert B. Friedman, The Ballad Revival: Studies in the Influence of Popular on Sophisticated Poetry (Chicago, 1961) 167] と述べているが、イタリアオペラを ‘unnatural’ と感じ、自分たちの中にうたい継がれてきたバラッドこそ ‘natural’ なものとして採用した点に、その後ワーズワス (William Wordsworth, 1770-1850) らが指摘するバラッドの魅力に触れた先見性があったと言えよう。

 

6才で両親を失い丁稚奉公に出たゲイは、生涯「美装と贅沢な生活」[Robert Chambers, Cyclopaedia of English Literature (London, 1858) 1: 589] に憧れていたそうで、彼のバラッド・オペラ同様、その諧謔性は庶民感覚あふれるものであった。ウェストミンスター寺院に眠るゲイの自作の墓碑銘に

 

Life is a jest, and all things show it;
I thought so once, and now I know it.

 

とある。虚実のあわいに人生ありである。 (M. Y.)

English poet and dramatist, born in Barnstaple, Devon. Gay earned more than 1,000 pounds through the publication of Poems on Several Occasions in 1720, and he invested all his money in the South Sea stock, losing everything by the end of the notorious ‘South Sea Bubble’. He was helped, however, by various patrons, and friends like Alexander Pope (1688-1744) and Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), the latter of whom recommended Gay to write some ‘Newgate pastoral’, resulting in The Beggar’s Opera (1728). John Rich (?1692-1761) was the owner of Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre, the stage of the first performance, and this famous opera was said to have made “Rich gay and Gay rich”.

 

A beggar states in a preliminary statement of the opera:

 

“This piece I own was originally writ for the celebrating [of] the marriage of James Chanter and Moll Lay, two most excellent ballad-singers. [. . .] I hope I may be forgiven that I have not made my opera throughout unnatural, like those in vogue; for I have no recitative; excepting this, as I have consented to have neither Prologue nor Epilogue, it must be allowed an opera in all its forms.” [Eighteenth-Century Plays, selected with an Introduction by John Hampden (London, 1928) 111]

 

Friedman makes the following comment on the contribution of Gay’s ‘ballad opera’: “One certain result of the ballad opera’s popularity was the removal of some of the opprobrium that attached to the term ‘ballad’” [Albert B. Friedman, The Ballad Revival: Studies in the Influence of Popular on Sophisticated Poetry (Chicago, 1961) 167]. Gay’s ‘naturalness’ to be found in the ballad opera against the ‘unnatural’ Italian opera in vogue points to his great prescience, to be followed by the ballad revival initiated by William Wordsworth and other Romantic poets towards the end of the century.    

 

Gay lost his parent at the age of six, and was forced to be apprenticed to a silk mercer in London. Robert Chambers’ Cyclopaedia of English Literature [(London, 1858) 1: 589] tells that Gay’s lifelong dreams were to be beautifully dressed and lead a luxurious life. His sense of wit and humour shared by the ordinary people was the core of Gay’s ballad opera. He died in London on 4 December 1732 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. The epitaph on his tomb is by Pope, and is followed by Gay’s own mocking couplet:

 

Life is a jest, and all things show it,
I thought so once, but now I know it.

 

Shall we say that he was the very person who embodied “Life is between fact and fiction”?      (M. Y.)

原詩(PDF)

  • 1. The Country Ballad-singer
  • 2. Molly Mog: or, the Fair Maid of the Inn
  • 3. Newgate's Garland: Being a New Ballad
  • 4. Sweet William’s Farewell to Black-Ey’d Susan
  • 5. A Ballad ('Twas when the seas were roaring)

訳詩(PDF)

  • 5. バラッド

原詩出典

* Cyclopædia of English Literature. Ed. Robert Chambers. Vol. 1. London, 1858.
* The Poetical Works of John Gay. Vol. 2. Edinburgh,1784.
* The Oxford Book of Eighteenth Century Verse. Chosen by David Nichol Smith. Oxford UP, 1926.
* Poems of John Gay. Ed. John Underhill. London, 1893.