Prince Pitt

This is one of two prints appearing during the King's madness and the resulting Regency crisis, sometimes attributed to Gillray, using essentially the same image, but with some differences in title and textual elements and some variation in the persons included. The other print is King Pitt. Both portray Pitt as an overreacher, with designs upon the Crown.

Prince Pitt

Prince Pitt [Deecember ??, 1788]
© Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

Both prints include a quotation from Shakespeare's Hamlet, where Prince Hamlet berates his mother for marrying his uncle, describing Claudius (the man he suspects of killing his father) as a usurper and thief, a

cut purse of the empire and the rule that from a shelf the precious diadem stole, and put it in his pocket.

Both prints seem to illustrate those words as Pitt stands upon the shoulders of two of his supporters and reaches for "the precious diadem" which is the British crown. The two supporters with one foot on the outstretched arms of the Prince of Wales and the other upon his chest are the Duke of Grafton and the Duke of Richmond. But unlike King Pitt, which remains largely allusive, Prince Pitt, contains a significant block of text below the print (in iambic pentameter couplets) as well as speech bubbles for all the characters portrayed.

See here Prince George! our Sovereign's darling Son,
Old England's Hope, & Heir to Britains Throne:
Trod under Foot the Royal Victim lies;
The while Prince Pitt above him dares to rise.
Our rightful Prince, the Heir Apparent down,
This new Pretender hopes to filch the Crown.
Two base-born Dukes of the curs'd Stuart Breed
Bend their vile necks to help him to the Deed
'Tis G------n's Duke upon the left you see;
The most renown'd for greatest Treachery.
But he who skews his bald pate on the right
Is R------ds Duke who never yet would fight.
May God eternally confuse their scheme;
And make them vanish like an empty Dream!
Rouse Britons, rouse! - hands, hearts in chorus join
To guard our Laws and save the Brunswick Line
Huzza! my Boys! - our courage never fails
God save the King! God bless the Prince of Wales!!!

In his speech bubble, Pitt reveals his hubris, saying: "The Prince of Wales has no more right to the regency than I have." The Prince of Wales expands call to action of the final four lines of the text block, saying "I appeal to the People of England to defend their own Rights and those of the House of Brunswick against this Banditti of Plunderers."

The net result of these textual additions is to make the action of the print much clearer and the identification of Grafton and Richmond much easier. It also brings the print closer in tone and execution to a handbill or broadside.

According to Robin Reilly in his William Pitt the Younger, both sides of the Regency controversy turned to the popular press to make their cases commissioning "cartoons, pamphlets, and handbills."(p. 206) The London Times, December 20, 1788,Pg. 2, noted that "New editions of Prince Pitt were stuck up yesterday in all the avenues leading to Parliament. Since Prince Pitt (unlike King Pitt) includes no listed publication date or publisher, it is possible that this print was not sold but distributed, and is the one referred to by the Times. And because it was intended for an audience including anyone passing near the Houses of Parliament, it may have been elaborated and made more accessible with the additional text.

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