An Excrescence, a Fungus, alias a Toadstool upon a Dunghill
The comic caricature of 18th century prints is not fundamentally different from our present-day situation comedy. It portrays an exaggerated but recognizable world of people, places, and things. And its greatest source of humor is sexual innuendo.
Satiric caricature, however, is very different. It presents us with a completely unreal world where politicians can be both themselves and butterflies, boots, bats, pigs, and dogs, where fictional creations such as John Bull and Britannia can interact with real people like Napoleon and Addington, where ministers can spout money, and the king can gobble gold. It is world not of simile, but metaphor. Prime Minister William Pitt is not simply LIKE a fungus upon the crown; he IS that fungus, that toadstool. The figure of speech has materialized before our very eyes, and its appropriateness confirmed by Pitt's very profile.
© Trustees of the British Museum
There was no one better at creating such visual and verbal equivalence than Gillray. Who can think of Buonaparte with seeing the "little boney" of Gillray's creation? And who but Gillray would have had the audacity to suggest that the king himself was part of the dung hill that created this fungus?
Sources and Reading
- Commentary from the British Museum on An Excrescence, a Fungus. . .
- Draper Hill, Fashionable Contrasts, 1966, #1
- Thomas Wright and R.H. Evans, Historical and Descriptive Account of the Caricatures of James Gillray #59
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