Image: A comic print showing the Prince of Wales, standing, who gestures dismissively toward two kneeling men, Charles James Fox and Richard Brinsley Sheridan. He turns away from them toward the distant figure of King George III. The Prince wears a fashionable blue coat with red collar and cuffs, white waistcoat, breeches and stockings, and black buckled shoes. In a speech bubble, he says: 'I Know you not Vain Profligates. Fall to your prayers; how ill White hairs become a fool & a jester; I have long Dream'd of such kind of men, so surfeit swell'd Seditious and Profane; but being awake I do despise my dream, Know: the grave doth gape for such, thrice wider than for other men, Reply not to me with a fool born jest, Presume not that I am the thing I was, for heaven doth know, So shall the World perceive, that I have turn'd away my former self, so will I those that kept me company, when ye do hear I am as I have been approach me, & ye shall be as ye were the Tutors & the Feeders of my Riots; I will return to my Father & say unto him Father I have Sinned against heaven & in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be Called thy Son make me as One of thy Hired Servants.' Fox and Sheridan kneel behind a fence marked 'Hitherto shall ye go & no further.' Both are weeping and bare-legged; Fox is dark-haired and unshaven, wearing a blue coat with a rosette pinned to the pocket bearing the label 'Your affectionate brother, Egalité.' Sheridan has a red nose and powdered hair, and wears a brown coat. A letter spills from his pocket, reading '...after you have caused the same Disturbances in your country that we have long enjoyed here, fly to the Arms of your Dear Brother Condorcet.' A speech bubble attached to both men reads 'We have often Devised matter enough to keep him in Continual Laughter, the wearing out of Six fashions, which is four terms, or two Actions; & he has Laughed without Intervalliums, a lye with a strong Oath & a Jest with a Sad Brow, has done with a Fellow that never had the ache in his Shoulders, we have seen him Laugh, till his Face has been like a Cloak ill laid up.' On the far left, George III stands under a signpost labelled 'To the Treasury.' His costume is identical to that of the Prince. He says 'Bring hither the fatted calf, we will rejoice & make merry for I have found the Sheep that was lost.' The title is printed below: 'False Liberty Rejected or Fraternizing and Equalizing Principles Discarded: No more Coalitions with French Cut Throats.' Other lettering advertises this print as part of an exhibition of caricatures relating to the French Revolution, including a model guillotine. An annotation in pencil identifies the first kneeling figure as 'C J Fox.'
False Liberty Rejected or Fraternizing & Equalizing principles discarded
Isaac Cruikshank, published by S W Fores
Date:1793
Hand-coloured etching
25.4 x 40.0 cm
Lewis Walpole Library 793.03.07.02, impression 1
Image credit: Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.
Guided tour
George, Prince of Wales repudiates Charles James Fox and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, in an echo of Prince Hal's rejection of Falstaff from Henry IV part 2. The trouserless Fox and Sheridan are identified as 'sans-culottes': political sympathisers with the French Revolution.
George's words are a free adaptation of Shakespeare's. In the background, George III quotes from the Biblical parable of the Prodigal Son.
The mish-mash of quotations and Cruikshank’s freedom with Shakespeare’s text effectively evoke the dramatist’s popular status in the 1790s. The implied wish for George to become a second Henry V would ultimately remain unfulfilled.