ABSTRACT
The Elizabethans found a subversive under every bed; and every Jacobean melodrama finds room for a subplot of treachery amid the rape and bloodlust. For the Victorians, it was of course murder that set up the frissons. The archetypal Augustan crime, rather oddly, was theft. The threat came to one's person - literally so, or in terms of sexual violation. But the eighteenth century reserved its insecurities for the loss of possession, and the attendant threat to one's social identity. A generation which had given its assent to Locke's political philosophy could only think it natural that the major deterrents should be imposed against robbery, with or without violence. It is true, of course, that sentimentally Macheath remains a much more likeable character than Peachum. For literature, the practical importance of this state of affairs was far-reaching. It enabled writers to use crime as a metaphor of social lesion, for breakdown in politics or national morale.
