Taking Physick; or the News of Shooting the King of Sweden!

One of the 45 Suppressed Plates in the Bohn edition of Gillray's Works owing to its inclusion of the strongly implied defecation (by the King and Queen no less!), Taking Physick was prompted by news of the assassination of Gustav III, King of Sweden. It purports to show the reactions of King George and Queen Charlotte sitting on the "thrones" of a latrine as their Prime Minister, William Pitt, delivers the apparently stomach-churning news, "Another Monarch done over!

Just a few weeks earlier, the Swedish King Gustav III had been shot as part of a planned aristocratic coup by a small group of Swedish "patriots" who resented his increasingly absolutist rule, which diminished the power of the aristocracy in the Swedish Parliament, abolished many of their traditional privileges, and was now choking off a free Press. One of the powers concentrated in the King alone was that of waging war; and at the time of his death, Gustav was planning an attack along with Russia upon revolutionary France. A long-time friend and ally of the French King Louis XVI, Gustav rightly perceived the French Revolution as a threat not only to the French Monarch but monarchs throughout Europe. And though his differences with England prevented him from being a preferred ally, his desire to see the full restoration of the French King's powers was not inconsistent with England's.

The other Monarch in Pitt's dire exclamation was the Habsburg Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Leopold II, brother to Marie Antoinette, who had NOT been assassinated but died suddenly and unexpectedly (probably from pleurisy) on March 1st. But no matter the cause, the effect on the balance of power in Europe and particularly on the new revolutionary government in France was the same. According to the editors of the London St James Chronicle Or British Evening Post, April 17, 1792

Taking matters, however, as they appear to our eyes, the death of the EMPEROUR and the KING of SWEDEN are certainly very favourable to the new Constitution. The Revolutionists had not two enemies more to be dreaded; and how problematical soever the intentions of the late EMPEROUR may have been, there is no sort of doubt but he would have done every thing in his power to reinstate his sister. As to the KING of SWEDEN, his forwardness to act against the French is well known. Whatever, therefore, may have been the motives on which he would have acted, his decease will be particularly serviceabie at the present juncture [to the revolutionaries]; and however he may have come by his fate, the friends of the new system will not fail to exult on the occasion. (p. 4.)

So the news of two defenders of monarchical principles dead within weeks of one another would have been an unpleasant shock to any King however secure on his throne. And that is what Gillray shows. "Physick" is a term in 18th century parlance meaning a purge or what we would today call a laxative. And in the pained expression of the Queen, the hands of the King gripping his stomach, and in the unfortunate products of the heraldic lion in the royal coat of arms, we have a crude but hilarious representation of the laxative effect of Pitt's message, the perfect embodiment of what today we would call (with equal lack of refinement)—"shitting bricks."

Sources and Reading

• Commentary from the British Museum on Taking Physick; or the News of Shooting the King of Sweden!.
• Diana Donald, The Age of Caricature, 1996. p. 146.
• "Gustav III," Wikipedia
• "Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor," Wikipedia
• "Declaration of Pillnitz," Wikipedia
• Thomas Wright and Joseph Grego, The Works of James Gillray, the Caricaturist; With the History of His Life and Times, p. 142.