With The Threepenny Opera, Bertolt Brecht aims to expose the corruption of the bourgeoisie. On the one hand, the figure of the beggar king Peachum is presented as the epitome of a businessman who sees poverty and need merely as means to an end. On the other hand, the unscrupulous criminal Mackie Messer proves to be the prototype of supposed bourgeois respectability. Peachum mobilizes the mass of beggars, organizes a demonstration of misery, and threatens to disrupt the coronation procession when the corrupt police chief Tiger-Brown refuses to arrest Mackie Messer, who disrupted Peachum's plans.