London, 1728: a stage-struck girl named Lavinia Fenton is cast in a new ballad opera about thieves and gaolers, becomes the toast of the town overnight, and leaves it all for a duke. Pearce wrote popular histories of the London stage as well as fiction, and knew exactly how the Beggar's Opera scandal worked — Gay's satire made Rich gay and Gay rich, as the joke of the season had it.
