Read a brief essay on the rise of pantomime, focusing on the career of John Rich, and the ballad opera in the 1710s and '20s as rivals to traditional comedy and tragedy.

Read the script of John Gay's ballad opera, the first of the form popular in mid-18th-c. England.

Gives a brief history of the 18th-century genre, listing such works it influenced as Arne and Bickerstaffe's "Thomas and Sally" and Linley and Sheridan's "The Duenna."

Oxford Dictionary of Music describes the genre, with a discussion of its founding, via a translation of Charles Coffey's "The Devil to Pay," of German singspiel.

Presents the Penguin Dictionary of Music's definition of the genre, listing the classic example, Gay's "The Beggar's Opera," and a modern homage by Vaughan Williams.