A 1791 caricature by the brilliant Gillray; far more graphic and inflammatory than Barry Blitt's New Yorker image. The imputation about Charles James Fox (Whig leader, rival to Pitt the Younger) is precisely the same as Blitt's imputation about Obama-- that he sympathizes with a violent foreign revolution.Notice the striking similarity in the use of "hope" to today's political language.
Comments & image are from David Francis Taylor's site devoted to Sheridan:
The Hopes of the Party, prior to July 14th - "From such Crown & Anchor Wicked Dreams, Good Lord Deliver Us."
July 19th 1791 (BMC 7892)
On a stage in the strand outside the Crown & Anchor tavern (a well-known radicalist haunt), an oblivious George III is about to be executed. The radical John Horne Tooke holds the king's legs while Fox, hesitant and muttering 'what if I should miss my aim', wields the axe. An impatient Sheridan holds the king's head in place and looks to Fox saying, 'Zounds! I wish I had hold of the hatchet.' The bodies of William Pitt, then Prime Minister, and Queen Charlotte, hang outside the tavern; their contortions, like the position of the king, are clearly and grotesquely sexual.
July 19th 1791 (BMC 7892)
On a stage in the strand outside the Crown & Anchor tavern (a well-known radicalist haunt), an oblivious George III is about to be executed. The radical John Horne Tooke holds the king's legs while Fox, hesitant and muttering 'what if I should miss my aim', wields the axe. An impatient Sheridan holds the king's head in place and looks to Fox saying, 'Zounds! I wish I had hold of the hatchet.' The bodies of William Pitt, then Prime Minister, and Queen Charlotte, hang outside the tavern; their contortions, like the position of the king, are clearly and grotesquely sexual.
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