John Gay wrote the most successful play of the eighteenth century by pointing out that highwaymen and government ministers are in the same line of work. The Beggar's Opera (1728) replaced Italian opera's castrati and mythological plots with thieves, fences and prostitutes singing to popular ballad tunes, and ran for an unprecedented sixty-two performances. Macheath, Peachum and Polly were understood to shadow Robert Walpole and his administration, and audiences enjoyed the resemblance enormously. Walpole did not. The sequel, Polly, was banned from the stage before it opened — which made the printed text a bestseller and Gay a wealthy man. He was a member of the Scriblerus Club with Swift, Pope and Arbuthnot, and shared their taste for parody. Trivia (1716) is a mock-georgic on the art of walking through London streets; his Fables, written for the young Duke of Cumberland, were reprinted for a century. Two hundred years later Brecht and Weill rebuilt The Beggar's Opera as The Threepenny Opera. Gay died in 1732; Pope wrote his epitaph.