Lavinia Fenton

English actress

Also known as: Duchess of Bolton

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Also called:: (from 1751) Duchess Of Bolton

Born:: 1708, London

Died:: Jan. 24, 1760, Greenwich, Kent, Eng. (aged 52)

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Lavinia Fenton (born 1708, London—died Jan. 24, 1760, Greenwich, Kent, Eng.) was an English actress and colourful social figure who created the role of Polly Peachum in John Gay’s masterwork, The Beggar’s Opera.

Fenton was probably the daughter of a naval lieutenant named Beswick, but she bore the name of her mother’s husband. She began as a street singer near her mother’s coffeehouse in Charing Cross and made her debut in 1726 as Monimia in Thomas Otway’s tragedy The Orphan; or, the Unhappy Marriage, in which she was an immediate success. She then joined the company of players under the management of John Rich at Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre, London, where, on Jan. 29, 1728, Fenton became a sensation as Polly; a famous painting by William Hogarth shows her in one of The Beggar’s Opera scenes. While at the peak of her career that year, she made her last appearance and ran away with Charles Paulet, 3rd Duke of Bolton, remaining his mistress until they married 23 years later.

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The Beggar’s Opera

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The Beggar’s Opera

work by Gay

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The Beggar’s Opera, a ballad opera in three acts by John Gay, performed at Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre, London, in 1728 and published in the same year. The work combines comedy and political satire in prose interspersed with songs set to contemporary and traditional English, Irish, Scottish, and French tunes. In it, Gay portrays the lives of a group of thieves and prostitutes in 18th-century London. The action centres on Peachum, a fence for stolen goods; Polly, his daughter; and Macheath, a highwayman. Gay caricatures the government, fashionable society, marriage, and Italian operatic style. Particularly evident are parallels made between the moral degeneracy of the opera’s protagonists and contemporary highborn society.

Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill based their ballad opera Die Dreigroschenoper (1928; The Threepenny Opera) on Gay’s work.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.