Caricature Cultural Politics and The Stage - The Case of Pizarro

Caricature, Cultural Politics, and the Stage: The Case of Pizarro
Author(s): Heather McPherson

Source: Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. 70, No. 4 (December 2007), pp. 607-631
Published by: University of California Press
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Caricature, Cultural Politics, and the Stage:

The Case of Pizarro
Heather McPherson
pizarro, richard brinsley sheridans much anticipated adaptation of

August von Kotzebues Die Spanier in Peru, opened at Drury Lane on 24 May 1799.1
Despite an initial running time of nearly five hours and annoying opening-night
glitches, Pizarro took London by storm. From its opening performance until its closing on 29 June, Pizarro was performed on thirty-one successive nights, grossing
13,624almost one fourth of Drury Lanes total receipts for the 179899 season.2
Sheridan assembled an exceptional cast, headed by John Philip Kemble, Sarah Siddons, Charles Kemble, and Dorothy Jordan, and spent lavishly on the production.3 The
splendid costumes and spectacular sets, particularly the Temple of the Sun and
Pizarros pavilion, which Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg may have had a hand in
designing, contributed to the spellbinding visual effects and pageantry.4 The plays
A visiting Fellowship at the Lewis Walpole Library (2001) and a grant from the School of Arts and
Humanities, University of Alabama at Birmingham (2002), funded my research on caricature
and cultural politics. I would especially like to thank Sheila OConnell, Maggie Powell, Joan Sussler,
and the staffs of the Lewis Walpole Library, the Pierpont Morgan Library, the Library of Congress,
the New York Public Library, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the British Museum Department of
Prints and Drawings for their assistance. A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the
American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies conference in Colorado Springs in 2002.
1. Kotzebues drama was based on Jean-Franois Marmontels Les Incas (1777). In Sheridans
adaptation, he combined and compressed two plays by Kotzebue, Die Sonnenjungfrau (1788) and
Die Spanier in Peru, oder Rollas Tod (1796). For the text of Pizarro, see Cecil Price, ed., The Dramatic
Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1973), 2:651704. Price reproduces the first printed
edition, published by James Ridgway on 25 June 1799.
2. See Charles Beecher Hogan, ed., The London Stage, 16601800 (Carbondale, Ill., 1968), pt. 5,
vol. 3, 2097. Exceptionally, the theater stayed open through June to accommodate demand. In the
17991800 season, Pizarro was performed thirty-six times and grossed 16,422 (pt. 5, vol. 3, 2202).
Although Pizarros appeal was initially topical, it remained popular for many years and in 1856 was
still playing at two London theaters.
3. See The London Stage, pt. 5, vol. 3, 2177.
4. Anthony Oliver and John Saunders argue that Loutherbourg designed some of the scenery;
see De Loutherbourg and Pizarro, 1799, Theatre Note-book 20 (Autumn 1965): 3032. Although
huntington library quarterly | vol. 70, no. 4
607
Pp. 607631. 2007 by Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery. issn 0018-7895 | e-issn 1544-399x. All rights reserved.
For permission to photocopy or reproduce article content, consult the University of California Press Rights and Permissions
website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/hlq.2007.70.4.607.

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heather mcpherson
phenomenal success was crowned by a command performance on 5 June 1799, attended by George III and the royal family, who graced the premises for the first time in
four years.5 Pizarros extraordinary public reception can be attributed to a combination of factorsthe stellar acting of John Philip Kemble and Sarah Siddons, the heroic
plot and spectacular staging, and, above all, its patriotic appeal, epitomized by Rollas
moving address to the Peruvian army (act 2, scene 2).
Pizarros hold over the popular imagination is further demonstrated by the remarkable series of caricatures it generated, in which contemporary politics fused with
melodramatic spectacle and real political figures appeared in the guise of theatrical
characters. Beginning in early June a dozen satirical prints appeared in rapid succession, an unprecedented graphic response to a theatrical production.6 This essay examines the multi-layered verbal and visual responses to Pizarro and its complex
personal and political subtexts, and shows the ways in which theatrical and political
identities and warring ideologies were dramatically re-envisioned and conflated
making the play an especially rich terrain for caricaturists. A cultural phenomenon
as well as a commercial blockbuster, Pizarro provides a useful lens for scrutinizing
the overlapping preoccupations of politics, satirical prints, and the stage in Georgian
London and the ways in which caricature and the theater came to function as a public
forum for contesting and asserting British identity and patriotic sentiment in the late
eighteenth century.
Although my discussion focuses primarily on the caricatural responses, Pizarro
also inspired celebratory images, such as Robert Dightons theatrical portraits of Kemble as Rolla and Siddons as Elvira, which I consider later in the essay, as well as paintings. Thomas Lawrences iconic canvas of Kemble as Rolla, exhibited at the Royal
Academy in 1800, represents the opposite end of the aesthetic spectrum from the caricatures. The painting, which I turn to in my conclusion, highlights the dramatic intensity and picturesque beauty of Kembles heroic performance, effectively blurring the
lines between portraiture and history painting, between actor and stage persona
much as the play itself did.7
his name does not appear in the advertisement, their claim is supported by John Brittons assertion
that some of the scenes are from sketches by the ingenious Loutherbourg (Sheridan and Kotzebue
[London 1799], 143). On 25 May 1799, the Times gushed, Pizarros Pavilion and the Temple of the
Sun are equal in point of brilliant effect to the best scenes of any of our Theatres; and the machinery,
decorations, and dresses were marked with appropriate taste and splendour; cited in John Loftis,
Sheridan and the Drama of Georgian England (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), 137.
5. Joseph W. Donohue, Dramatic Character in the English Romantic Age (Princeton, N.J. , 1970),
128. The royal command performance paid off handsomely, to the tune of 639, and receipts increased
after 5 June; see The London Stage, pt. 5, vol. 3, 2182.
6. See M. Dorothy George, British Museum Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires, vols. 511
(London, 193542)[BM hereafter], nos. 9396, 9397, 9398, 9399, 9402, 9406, 9407, 9409, and 9417.
Dightons theatrical portraits of Kemble and Siddons as Rolla and Elvira (BM 9436, 9437) were
published June 1799 and 14 December 1799, respectively. The Rival Managers (not in BM), published
June 1799, and BM 9409 conflate politics and the theater and satirize Pizarros patriotic oratory. The
Peel Collection, vol. 6 (Pierpont Morgan Library), contains eight Pizarro prints, indicating that they
were collected as a series.
7. See Kenneth Garlick, Sir Thomas Lawrence: A Complete Catalogue of the Oil Paintings (Oxford,
1989), no. 451c, 216. The painting (formerly Kansas City Art Institute) was engraved by S. W. Reynolds

caricature, cultural politics, and the stage
609
Surprisingly little attention has been paid to the cultural and political contexts
that contributed to Pizarros reception, or to the trenchant, ideologically engaged satirical prints it spawned. Scholars for the most part have concentrated on the plays composition and the text itself.8 But the text offers only faint glimmerings of the theatrical
experience that dazzled and captivated contemporary audiences. Sheridans overthe-top production depended heavily on visual pageantry and special effects, as well
as choral and instrumental music.9 The elaborate staging and processional aspect so
crucial to the plays visual impact can be gleaned from an annotated prompt book for
Pizarro, which notes the order and stage blocking for scenes such as the spectacular
procession at the Temple of the Sun and documents the extensive excisions and other
modifications.10
While offering pointed remarks about the play and its faults, Mrs. Larpent, wife
of the Lord Chamberlains examiner and an astute theatrical observer, nonetheless recognized that Pizarros spectacular appeal transcended its shortcomings:
Pizarro with innumerable faults interests. It is a Pastic[c]ioOpera,
Tragedy,very Showy. A flash of Language which when examined is
more Sound than Sense, forced violent Situations, and every thing
brought forward to seize the ImaginationJudgment has nothing to
do in the business . . . Kemble Acts Rolla in the most perfect manner.
Mrs. Siddons acts Elvira well but rather too highly wrought. The whole
is a magnificent Spectacle.11
Although the scenic effects and patriotic speeches were widely applauded, Pizarro
elicited an extraordinary range of critical responses, from extravagant praise to withering denunciation, in the case of the Anti-Jacobin Review. In Sheridan and Kotzebue
(1799), John Britton claimed that Pizarro has excited the greatest variety of praise
and censure from the critical fraternity of any production ever brought out upon the
English stage.12 Britton also observed that the responses to Pizarro were highly
in 1803. See Shearer Wests insightful analysis in Thomas Lawrences Half-History Portraits and the
Politics of Theatre, Art History 14, no. 2 (June 1991): 23539. There is also a painting, Mrs. Jordan as
Cora (ca. 1799; Mander and Mitchenson Theatre Collection).
8. The most useful sources are Donohue, Dramatic Character, 12556; Loftis, Sheridan and the
Drama, 12441; Thomas Moore, Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Richard Brinsley Sheridan,
2 vols. (London, 1825), 2:28692; and Price, ed., Dramatic Works, 2:62550, the most complete account.
See also Grzegorz Sinko, Sheridan and Kotzebue: A Comparative Essay (Wroclaw, 1949).
9. See The London Stage, pt. 5, vol. 3, 2177. The music was composed and selected by Michael Kelly;
the machinery, decorations, and dresses were under the direction of Johnson; and the scenery was
designed and executed by Marinari, Greenwood, Demaria, Banks, and Blackmore.
10. See the Prompt Book for Pizarro, 3d ed. (London, 1799), Folger Shakespeare Library, PROMPT
P46, which is extensively annotated and appears to be a final or souvenir prompt book dating from the
early 1800s. Because it records the running time, the extent of the excisions can be gauged. The first act
was cut to thirty-five minutes and the seminal second act to forty-five minutes.
11. See Mrs. Larpents diary, 14 January 1800 (Huntington MS. HM 31201), cited in Price, ed.,
Dramatic Works, 2:63637.
12. Britton, Sheridan and Kotzebue, 140.

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partisan and frequently dictated by party allegiances.13 As we shall see, Sheridan succeeded at angering both the Pittites, who resented his political opportunism and popular success, and the radical Whigs, who were appalled by Sheridans defection and the
plays loyalist rhetoric.14 According to Samuel Rogers, Charles James Fox declared that
Pizarro was the worst thing possible.15
Even though partisan politics were at the heart of the polemics surrounding
Pizarro, hostile critics tended to focus on the plays literary and historical shortcomings or its perceived immorality.16 Thomas Moore, Sheridans official biographer,
scathingly characterized the text as an ambiguous hybridneither verse nor prose, in
which pomp and inversion were substituted for meter.17 Moore also denounced
Pizarros dialogue as unworthy of its author, noting with relief that Sheridan actually
bore little responsibility for either the plays defects or its merits.18 Most critics, however, gave Sheridan considerably more credit for his treatment of the original, notably
for having streamlined the action and greatly improved the dialogue by clothing the
sentiments of Kotzebue in his own language.19
Among the most rabid critiques was Remarks on Kotzebues Pizarro, published anonymously in the Anti-Jacobin Review in June 1799, which excoriated Kotzebues plays for making the great vicious and the low virtuous. The author denounced
Elvira as a Godwinite heroine, calling her one of the most reprehensible characters
that was ever suffered to disgrace the stage.20 The derisive Critique on the Tragedy of
Pizarro (1799) complained that Pizarro was a pantomime in five long acts, deficient in
plot, character, and language and lacking greatness of mind in the character of
Pizarro.21 Turning Sheridans own lines from The Critic against him, the anonymous
reviewer, referring to the spectacular opening scene of Pizarro, maliciously cited
Mr. Puff s Smaller things must give way to a striking scene at the opening.
13. Ibid., 141. Envy and Sheridans notoriety also came into play.
14. See Lady Elizabeth Foster to Augustus Foster, 27 December 1799, cited in Price, ed., Dramatic
Works, 2:635. According to Lady Foster, there was no other subject of conversation, and opinions were
divided: The violent Ministerialists are angry that Sheridan should have such applause; the violent
oppositionists are as angry at the loyalty of the Play; and the rigid and censorious are suspicious of
such pure morality and mild religion from the pen of a person esteemed profligate.
15. Cited in Samuel Rogers, Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers (New York, 1856), 95.
16. See A Critique on the Tragedy of Pizarro (London, 1799), and Samuel Argent Bardsley, Critical
Remarks on Pizarro (London, 1800). In 1802 The Oracle denounced Kotzebuemania as a mental malady
reaching its apogee with Pizarro (cited in Price, ed., Dramatic Works, 2:6367).
17. See Moore, Memoirs of Sheridan, 2:287. Extrapolating from Moores commentary, I have coined
the phrase amphibious hybrid. Moore vehemently insists that the play ought never, from either motives of profit or the vanity of success, to have been coupled with his [Sheridans] name.
18. Ibid., 2:28788. Although Sheridan deviated little from the original drama, and the dialogue
follows the English translations he used, he rewrote some speeches and scenes entirely. See Price, ed.,
Dramatic Works, 2:62527, 64050, for the most helpful discussion of
the texts genesis.
19. See Britton, Sheridan and Kotzebue, who cites the Monthly Mirror, 142.
20. See the Anti-Jacobin Review, cited in Britton, Sheridan and Kotzebue, 12728.
21. See A Critique on the Tragedy of Pizarro, iv, 25.

611
In his more staid Critical Remarks on Pizarro (1800), Samuel Argent Bardsley
praised Pizarros pathetic sentiment and energetic declamation but denounced its historical improbability.22 He also considered the characters morally flawed, complaining
that Elvira was not suitable for a tragic heroine, and even detecting something morally
insidious lurking in Rollas address to Pizarro.23 Like the Anti-Jacobin Review, Bardsley
and other conservative critics attacked Pizarro primarily on moral and literary
grounds rather than attempting to unpack the complex political and personal subtexts
and cultural tensions that, as we shall see, the caricaturists ruthlessly exposed.
Not surprisingly, the most damning account of Sheridans political opportunism and hypocrisy was penned by one of his bitterest enemies, William Cobbett. In
The Political Proteus (1804), Cobbett denounced Sheridan as a demagogue and a hypocrite, who pulled out his true English feeling like a stage prop and shamelessly
played to the gullible gallery of public opinion.24 In particular, he condemned Sheridans shameless circulation of Rollas speech at Drury Lane, his invitation to the Volunteer Corps to attend Pizarro, and the way in which the playhouse performances were
connected with parliamentary proceedings.25 Cobbett also alleged that Sheridan had
perniciously modified Rollas address in his text by substituting country for king
and inserting the inflammatory words peoples choice, subversively aligning Pizarro
with radical politics and French republicanism.26 However, Cobbetts denunciation of
Sheridan did not derail Pizarro, which remained popular into the early 1800s. The
public enthusiastically applauded the play, vindicating the Morning Heralds prophetic
reviewer, who had hailed Rollas address to the Peruvian army as one of the most successful appeals to Patriotism, that has ever distinguished the English Drama.27 In
1803, in response to heightened fears of invasion, Sheridan once more donned the
mantle of Pizarro. He became colonel of the Westminster volunteers and reissued
Rollas patriotic speech as a broadside entitled Sheridans Address to the People.28

Although Pizarro has frequently been dismissed as a derivative, commercial potboiler unworthy of Sheridans dramatic genius, it commands attention as a cultural
and political phenomenon.29 Moreover, there is every indication that Sheridan
22. He also criticized the music and scenic decoration, finding them splendidly insipid.
See Bardsley, Critical Remarks, 4748. The pamphlet was written for the Manchester Literary Society.
23. Ibid., 4447. This is the only critique of Rollas speech I have found.
24. William Cobbett, The Political Proteus: A View of the Public Character and Conduct of
R. B. Sheridan, Esq. (London, 1804); see esp. 7693.
25. Ibid., 78.
26. Ibid., 8384.
27. The Morning Herald, 25 May 1799, cited in Price, ed., Dramatic Works, 633.
28. West, Thomas Lawrences Half-History Portraits, 237 n. 56; Cobbett, Political Proteus, 7880.
29. Like The Beggars Opera, Pizarro was a widely discussed cultural phenomenon. It inspired a
five-act parody, attributed to Matthew West (London, [1799]), and popular songs, such as Paddys Description of Pizarro, in A Garland of New Songs [Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1800]. The Marches in the Play

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himself took great pride in Pizarro and its text, which was published under his name
on 25 June 1799 and went through twenty-one editions, selling an extraordinary thirty
thousand copies that year alone.30 The impetus for mounting Pizarro was in part financial. After the costly expansion of Drury Lane in 1794, the theater was deeply
leveraged and its finances were particularly precarious. Having borrowed heavily
from the theaters treasury, Sheridan was forced to obtain loans from banks and private individuals to pay the company. Actors, notably Mrs. Siddons, were pressing
Sheridan for payment of their salaries.31 The Strangers highly successful run at Drury
Lane in 1798 was indeed a powerful incentive for adapting another of Kotzebues
emotion-laden, crowd-pleasing dramas for the English stage.32 However, in the paranoid ideological climate of the late 1790s, mounting a Kotzebue play about military
conquest, conflicting loyalties, and betrayal steeped in topical references was a bold
gamble that could easily have backfired if the play had been proscribed as disloyal or
politically subversive.33
All the evidence indicates that Sheridan was emotionally as well as financially
invested in Pizarro, and its personal and political subtexts prevent our dismissing it as
mere hackwork.34 For Sheridan, who was seeking to regain the moral high ground
after the disastrous Maidstone Trial and the failed rebellion of the United Irishmen,
Pizarro was a bold political maneuver and personal coup.35 In his adaptation Sheridan
daringly commandeered Kotzebues drama for his own ideological purposes, ingeniously injecting radical Whig politics and bits of his famous parliamentary speeches
from the Hastings Trial36 into the cauldron of patriotic sentiment and nationalistic
of Pizarro, composed by Kelly, was published [1799], and Coras song from Pizarro, sung by Mrs. Jordan,
was anthologized.
30. Price, ed., Dramatic Works, 2:64849. Demand was so great that several unauthorized editions
preceded the official version. On 17 June 1799, The Oracle published a disclaimer, informing the public
that the correct edition, as now performing at Drury Lane, would appear in about ten days.
31. See The London Stage, pt. 5, vol. 3, 2098. Sheridans correspondence from the 1790s repeatedly
refers to pressing debts and arrears in paying Siddons; see The Letters of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 2 vols.,
ed. Cecil Price (Oxford, 1966), esp. 2:56, 84. An undated letter to John Grubb urges him to settle with Siddons. Her frustration in attempting to collect her salary is a constant refrain in her letters from the 1790s.
32. On the vogue for Kotzebue in England, see L. F. Thompson, Kotzebue: A Survey of His Progress
in France and England (Paris, 1928), 55108. See also The Beauties of Kotzebue (London, 1800), which
published excerpts of Kotzebues plays organized thematically. Excerpts from Spaniards in Peru
appeared under the rubric of heroism (pp. 17983).
33. In October 1798 the Anti-Jacobin Review denounced Kotzebue for rendering the upper
classes objects of indignation or contempt and for diffusing the new philosophism. In 1799 the
Duchess of Wrttemberg wrote to George III from Stuttgart, warning him of the moral dangers of
Kotzebues plays. Cited in Fintan OToole, A Traitors Kiss: The Life of Richard Brinsley Sheridan
(London, 1997), 342.
34. The fact that Sheridan dedicated Pizarro to his wife further attests its personal significance
to him.
35. OToole, Traitors Kiss, 341, 34345.
36.The Hastings Trial, the longest and most famous in British legal history, began in 1788. In 1787
Hastings, former governor-general of India, was impeached for misconduct and corruption. Sheridans
eloquent speech on the Begums of Oudh turned the tide of public opinion against Hastings. In 1795
Hastings was acquitted on all charges by the House of Lords.

613
fervor, brought to a boil by the threat of a French invasion. Sheridans political opportunism and hypocrisy in invoking loyalist sentiments were not lost on savvy contemporary observers, such as Kembles biographer James Boaden, who sardonically
observed:
There was a political point, of no mean importance, obvious in this play;
we had Mr. Sheridan (formerly furious in the cause of France, invoking
destruction upon the heads of the british cabinet, and coveting for
himself the blow of vengeance, ) now speaking with the heart and voice
of his country, his perfect abhorrence of the conduct and the principles
of revolution; and urging by every oratorical charm his countrymen to
resist and disdain the arms and arts of France.37
As caricaturists and politically astute critics recognized, Pizarro was a multilayered melodramatic spectacle that, despite its apparent loyalist rhetoric, actually
celebrated the principles of the opposition. Pizarro, Sheridans last major theatrical
enterprise and the most Machiavellian, was an audacious political and commercial
risk in which his dramatic and parliamentary careers coalesced for the last time. The
only play written after his election to the House of Commons, Pizarrowith its
tragic-historical scenario and its suggestive political subtextstands apart from his
earlier comic masterpieces. Indeed, it could be argued that the particular value Sheridan placed on Pizarro was due to its patriotic oratory and seamless adaptation of contemporary politics to the British stage.38 By skillfully manipulating the combined
power of visual spectacle and patriotic rhetoric and by blatantly appealing to nationalist sentiment and the emotions, Sheridan succeeded brilliantly at capturing the
public imagination and triumphing (albeit temporarily) over financial and political
adversity.39
It was only fitting that Sheridana brilliant witwho isolated and ridiculed his comic
characters, much as a skillful caricaturist would, was in turn lampooned in the satires
produced in response to Pizarro.40 Sheridan, whose dueling theatrical and political
personas and public notoriety made him an irresistible target, was one of the most
frequently caricatured figures of the late eighteenth century.41 Admired for his wit and
37. James Boaden, Memoirs of the Life of John Philip Kemble, 2 vols. (1825; reprint ed., 1969), 2:241.
38. R. Crompton Rhodes, in Harlequin Sheridan: The Man and the Legends (Oxford, 1933), makes
this point (p. ix). As Sheridan always insisted, he was a man of the theater in spite of himself.
39. See OToole, Traitors Kiss, 34445; Loftis, Sheridan and the Drama, 124. Mrs. Larpent (cited
n. 11, above) noted the hyperbolic language and forced situations, describing it as more sound than
sense.
40. In Sheridan and the Drama, Loftis compares Sheridan to a caricaturist (p. ix).
41. See Nicholas K. Robinson, Edmund Burke: A Life in Caricature (New Haven, Conn., and London, 1996), 194. In the Appendix of Persons Most Caricatured, 177897, Sheridan comes in seventh,
behind Fox, Pitt, George III, North, the Prince of Wales, and Burke.

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inspired oratory in the House of Commons, Sheridan became a mainstay of caricaturists from the late 1780s on. In caricatures published in the 1790s, the personal and the
political increasingly overlapped, and visual conventions for representing Sheridan
solidified. Caricaturists frequently played on his name, depicting him as a drunkard
with his trademark bottle of Sherry, or with the blotched skin and bulbous red nose of
the habitual drinker. His theatrical associations and financial sleight of hand engendered caricatures of him as the trickster Harlequin, servant of various masters, or
occasionally as Punch. Another recurring theme was his impecuniousness. The
number of caricatures peaked as politics heated up, notably in 1788 around the Hastings Trial, and in the late 1790s when the oppositions political fortunes hit bottom in
the wake of the Treason Trials and the invasion threat. In the Pizarro caricatures,
Sheridans opportunism, drunkenness, stage connections, and impecuniousness
were melded together in a particularly potent graphic cocktail. Of the twenty-two
caricatures from 1799 linked to Sheridan, fully half allude to Pizarro, which for a
time monopolized the publics attention to the exclusion of foreign affairs.42
James Gillray, the most brilliantly inventive satirist of the age, took the lead in
pillorying Pizarros commercial success and Sheridans greed. Pizarro Contemplating
over the Product of His New Peruvian Mine (figure 1), published 4 June 1799 by Hannah
Humphrey, established the template for the prints that followed.43 Although Sheridan
himself did not appear in the play, in the caricatures he assumes the title role of the
avaricious, morally bankrupt conquistador.44 Sheridan/Pizarro is depicted against an
exotic backdrop of mountains and a palm tree, greedily gloating over his profits.
Dressed as Pizarro in a striped Spanish doublet with a ruffed collar, Sheridan is caricatured as an anti-heroa fat buffoon with the blotched face of a drunkard. Significantly,
he is surrounded and abetted by the puffery of the press, which he had himself satirized
in The Critic (1779). Indeed, Pizarro was so widely advertised before the opening that
the house was completely sold out before the play was finished or the music composed.45 In the print the wreathed twisted columns are adorned with putti blowing the
trumpets of fame and holding up placards inscribed Morning Chronicle, Morning Herald, Courier, Times, and so on. The caption, which parodies the plays soaring rhetoric,
reads: Honor? Reputation? A mere Bubble!will the praises of posterity charm my
bones in the Grave? . . . O, Gold! Gold! For thee, I would sell my native Spain, as freely
as I would plunder Peru. Gillrays depiction of Sheridan as a greedy conquistador attacks his avarice, hypocrisy, and political opportunism and alludes to his manipulation
of the press as well as his notorious indebtedness. This savaging of Sheridan may have
42. See George, British Museum Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires, 7:xxxiv. Bracketing the
Pizarro prints are damaging allusions to the Maidstone Trial (BM 9343), The Funeral of the Remains of
the Opposition (BM 9411), and Political Hoaxing (BM 9416).
43. BM 9396. It is the earliest dated print and clearly served as the model for BM 9397. Since not all
the prints are dated, the order of publication cannot always be determined. Gillray proved especially
adept at deploying disparaging theatrical references to discredit Sheridan.
44. In the 1799 production William Barrymore played the role of Pizarro.
45. Michael Kelly, cited in Price, ed., Dramatic Works, 2:626. Kelly, who composed the music, as
noted above, recounts the frustrations of collaborating with Sheridan.

615
figure 1. James Gillray, Pizarro Contemplating over the Product of His New Peruvian Mine (1799;
H. Humphrey). Hand-colored etching, 13 x 9 7/8 in. Copyright the Trustees of the British Museum.

616
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been fueled in part by the secret government pension Gillray began receiving in 1797 in
return for switching his political allegiance and attacking the Whig opposition.46
Pizarro Returning from the Gold Mines of Peru (figure 2), which also satirizes
Sheridans greed, deals more explicitly with his radical politics, foregrounding his duplicity and opportunism. Published in June 1799 by William Holland, the unsigned
print spells out the broader political implications of Sheridans profiteering and the
play itself.47 Holland, a radical publisher of prints and broadsheets with a literary bent,
wrote the dialogue and may have conceived the print.48 Sheridan/Pizarro, dressed as a
Spanish don with a Napoleonic plumed hat, strides forward, weighed down by an immense sack of gold. Close on his heels, Fox, who has slashed the sack, captures the cascading guineas in his bonnet-rouge, which is adorned with a revolutionary cockade.
Clearly visible in the background are Drury Lane and a hoarding with bills posted,
alluding to the theatres close association with Whig opposition politics as well as
Sheridans commercialism. The text slyly echoes the patriotic appeal of Rollas speech,
which, in effect, masked the Whig subtext of the play. Sheridan/Pizarro, who had enthusiastically embraced the French Revolution and maintained ties with the most
radical reformist societies, disingenuously observes, I must hurry home or I shall be
waylaid by the Jacobin Banditti! The print recalls Gillrays earlier satirical print, The
Political Banditti Assailing the Savior of India (1788), in which Fox and Burke violently
assail Hastings and his money bags, which was published by Holland and listed in
his 1788 catalogue.49 As the caricaturists lampooning Pizarro clearly understood, the
real protagonist was Sheridan himselfplaywright, theater manager, Harlequin, and
political proteus50whose spectacular stagecraft and recycled histrionic rhetoric
from the Hastings Trial mesmerized and duped the spectators attending Pizarro,
including the king.
In June 1799 three prints featuring the command performance of Pizarro, attended by George III and the royal family, appeared in rapid succession.51 The royal
visit generated intense excitement, and Drury Lane was packed.52 Sheridan, naturally,
46. See Richard Godfrey, James Gillray: The Art of Caricature (London, 2001), 19. Gillray received
a pension of two hundred pounds and became a ministerial propagandist. In the late 1790s he contributed to the violently partisan government-subsidized Anti-Jacobin Magazine. See also Diana
Donald, The Age of Caricature: Satirical Prints in the Reign of George III (New Haven, Conn., and
London, 1996), 166, 17577.
47. BM 9397. The print is not precisely dated. Holland, the leading publisher of anti-royal prints in
the 1790s, and the radical bookseller James Ridgway (who later published Pizarro) were arrested in
December 1792 for selling Thomas Paines pamphlets. See Donald, Age of Caricature, 34, 14649.
48. Holland generally composed the texts for his caricatures, which have a distinctive looped
script. See David Alexander, Richard Newton and English Caricature in the 1790s (University of Manchester, Whitworth Art Gallery, 1998), 1617.
49. BM 6955. See Simon Turner, William Hollands Satirical Print Catalogues, 17881794, Print
Quarterly 16, no. 2 (1999): 134.
50. Cobbett was especially scathing on Sheridans demagoguery and hypocrisy in The Political
Proteus; see n. 24 above.
51. See BM 9398, 9399, and 9402.
52. See Donohue, Dramatic Character, 13637.

617
figure 2. Pizarro Returning from the Gold Mines of Peru (1799; W. Holland). Hand-colored etching,
9 1/4 x 12 7/8 in. Copyright the Trustees of the British Museum.
made the most of the occasion, turning it into a patriotic manifestation and a personal
vindication. However, Sheridans dramatic embrace of loyalist principles met with
considerable skepticism, as the caricatures indicate. Although the Times reported that
His Majesty was peculiarly gratified with Rollas rapturously applauded loyalist
address, George III privately complained to Lord Harcourt that Pizarro was a poor
composition.53 The most striking of the three satires is Pizzaro, a New Play, or the
Drury-Lane Masquerade (figure 3), published 11 June 1799 and attributed to Ansell.54 A
grotesquely fat, swaggering Sheridan, dressed as Pizarro, strides forward, ostentatiously lighting the royal party, arrayed in formal court dress, to their box. Although all
three proprietors of Drury Lane greeted the royal party and escorted them to their box,
in the caricatures only Sheridan/Pizarro is pictured. When the royal family entered,
there was an ovation that lasted almost ten minutes. Directly behind Sheridan, the
53. See the Times, 6 June 1799, cited in Donohue, Dramatic Character, 138; OToole, Traitors Kiss,
348, who cites Farington.
54. BM 9402. Published by SW Fores, the print appeared in London und Paris 4 (1799) with an
explanatory text (BM 9402A). All three satires represent Sheridan lighting the way to the royal box
and underscore his duplicity and political opportunism.

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heather mcpherson
stage is partially visible, with Fox and his followers in the pit, cheering madly and waving their hats in the air. In the bubble above his head, Sheridan calls out for God Save
the King, which was in fact played twice before the play began.55 The print depicts a
gullible George III, totally taken in by Sheridans performance. The king, calling the author a charming man, adds that he never saw him in such a good light before. One
of the princesses exclaims, Bless me I never saw that General at Court, further conflating Sheridan and Pizarro. Significantly, the stage is labeled Anti-Jacobin House
rather than the usual Veluti in Speculum. The royal visit, re-staged in the print as a
theatrical tableau, is cynically exposed as a masquerade in which the royal family are
duped and manipulated by Sheridan. Visible in the foreground is a stone inscribed
Maidstone Loyalty, anchoring a paper that reads, [Tomorr]ow evening performed a
new play called the Loyal Author to which will be added a Peep behind the Curtain
Vivan[t] Rex et Regina, further underscoring the political and theatrical parallels and
unmasking Sheridans duplicity. The Drury-Lane Masquerade incisively deconstructs
and satirizes Sheridans cynical campaign to recoup his political reputation by refashioning himself as a loyalist and a devoted servant to the crown.
Two other closely related prints also refer to the Jacobins and highlight the gullibility of the king, who staunchly defends Sheridans loyalty. In The Return from Pizarro
(figure 4), dated 5 June 1799 and attributed to Isaac Cruikshank, Sheridan, portrayed in
elegant court dress and a powdered wig, holds up two candelabra while stiffly goosestepping before the king and queen and Lord Salisbury, the chamberlain.56 Although
the date underscores the prints documentary dimension, it may have been produced
in anticipation of the royal visit or dated after the fact. The king insists to the queen that
Sheridan is very loyal no Jacobinnot believe it. Fox, gazing down on the scene, exclaims enviously, I wish I was a manager! The title, The Return from Pizarro, is a
clever double entendre alluding to both Sheridans financial profits from Pizarro and
his return to favor based on his loyalist coup de thtre. By contrast, in Returning from
Pizarro!! (published June 1799 by Holland), Sheridans slovenly appearance and everyday attire sharply differentiate him from the elegantly dressed royal party, making him
appear an obsequious lackey.57 George III, seen from the back in silhouette, volubly
attests to Sheridans loyalty while Fox, visible at the far right wielding a constables staff,
clears the path, shouting, Stand away there, dont stop the passage you pack of Jacobin
rascals!! As all three caricatures underscore, refashioning the Spanish conquest of the
New World into a contemporary political allegory and transforming Drury Lane into a
loyalist anti-Jacobin stronghold was a brilliant as well as parlous demonstration of
Sheridans protean powers and superior stagecraft.
55. The text reads: Stand by there, move that Stone out of the Way, hollo Music there play God
Save the King, dye hear take care, Sire, mind that step, louder the music, make room for the best of
Kings and wisest of Sovereigns! Encore. The Duke of Yorks band accompanied the Drury Lane
singers in God Save the King, and Rule Britannia was sung between Pizarro and the farce.
56. BM 9399. Sheridan, who is not as viciously caricatured, appears more respectable in court dress.
57. BM 9398. The unsigned print cannot be precisely dated.

619
figure 3. [Ansell], Pizzaro, a New Play, or the Drury-Lane Masquerade (1799; S. W. Fores).
Hand-colored etching, 9 x 15 1/2 in. Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.
figure 4. [Isaac Cruikshank], The Return from Pizarro (1799; J. Atkin). Hand-colored etching,
8 7/16 x 12 5/8 in. (cropped). Copyright the Trustees of the British Museum.

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heather mcpherson
The most spectacular instance of the conflation of the play conflation with contemporary politics and the re-envisaging of political conflict as stage spectacle is Rollas
Address to the Peruvian Army (figure 5), a broadsheet issued 12 July 1799 by Holland.58
Pitt, in the guise of Rolla, appropriates Rollas overheated oratory from act 2, scene 2.
He addresses a group of loyalist chieftains, including Lord Dundas, dressed in tartan
and a feathered headdress. The print burlesques one of the plays climactic scenes, set
in the Temple of the Sun. In contrast to the previous satires, Rollas lengthy speech,
containing the plays most famous line, We serve a Monarch whom we lovea God
whom we adore, is reprinted verbatim rather than parodied, thus directly linking
Sheridans play with contemporary politics and apotheosizing Pitt as patriotic defender of Britain and exemplary hero. Across the sea, the Spaniards, equated with the
French Republicans in Sheridans text, are transmogrified into Foxite Whigs, holding
up their bonnets-rouges, under the tricolor banner of Libertas. Recognizable among
the motley band are Fox, Derby, Bedford, and Erskine. Despite Rollas rousing speech
and the veneer of loyalist rhetoric, the plays Whiggish implications were clear to Pitts
propagandists. Indeed, Pitt, who pronounced Kemble to be the noblest actor that
he had even seen, smiled at Rollas speech, recognizing some of the figures he had admired at the Hastings Trial.59 In the broadsheet, Pizarro is appropriated and re-staged
with a markedly different political agenda, which is, arguably, more propagandistic
than satirical. Moreover, the literal inclusion of the text seems like a transparent attempt to subjugate the plays unruly narrative and slippery political content to ensure
that the moral fable is properly interpreted. A revitalized Pitt, apotheosized as the
heroic Rolla, electrifies the triumphant army of loyalists while the Lilliputian figures of
the opposition, metonymically evoking the much-feared French invaders, are reduced
to inconsequential specks on the horizon. The print conjures a fictionalized patriotic
spectacle in which contemporary political events are (re)presented in terms of Sheridans play and individual politicians double as theatrical characters, thus thoroughly
conflating Westminster and Drury Lane.
Sheridans political agenda was clearly spelled out in his depiction of Pizarro and
the Spaniards in Peru, which referenced his political career and his own oratory, notably his histrionic depiction of Lord Hastings and the English in India during the
Hastings Trial. Indeed, Sheridan shamelessly recycled his famous analogy of the vulture and the lamb in Rollas address to the Peruvian army.60 Moreover, Sheridans lifelong championship of liberty and human rights was embedded in the very fabric of the
play, which can be interpreted as a moral fable about political oppression and colonial
exploitation, as it evidently was by some of the Pittites.61 Because Pizarro proved such
an effective vehicle for galvanizing public sentiment, it is not surprising that the broadsheet sought to appropriate and nullify the plays impact by inverting the political alle-
58. BM 9407.
59. Cited in Boaden, Memoirs of Kemble, 2:242; on the Hastings Trial, see n. 36, above.
60. See OToole, Traitors Kiss, 34647.
61. Loftis argues this had special relevance to the debates about the slave trade.

621
figure 5. Rollas Address to the Peruvian Army (1799; W. Holland). Hand-colored etching with
aquatint, 9 13/16 x 17 1/4 in. Copyright the Trustees of the British Museum.
gory and casting Pitt as Rolla. The visual and verbal debate over the imaging of Pizarro,
especially the inventive restaging of Rollas Address to the Peruvian Army, reflects the
highly charged political climate of the late 1790s. Yet it also underscores how morally
and politically ambivalent Sheridans play was, making it a perfect vehicle for caricature, in which the ambiguities and ideological tensions were played out visually.
In The Rival Managers (figure 6), published June 1799 by Holland, Pitt and
Sheridan confront each other, mano-a-mano, as rival theatrical managers, highlighting the public and nationalistic dimension of the stage and its analogies with the political arena.62 In the print Pitt refutes that analogy, maintaining that Sheridan must not
pretend to compare his company to Pitts productions, which reduce Drury Lanes best
tragedies and comedies to farce. The playbill posted behind Pitt advertises the favorite
comedy, Tax upon Tax, or the way to grow rich, to be followed by a grand spectacle
called Peace in Perspective, alluding to Pitts oppressive tax policies and failed peace
negotiations. Sheridan counters that his is the best conducted theatre of the two,
adding, immodestly, as to loyalty where you have touchd with a pencil, I have made
use of a trowel. The bogus playbill on the wall behind Sheridan advertises The Gold
Mines of Peru, or a new way to pay old debts, with the character of Pizarro by the
62. Not in BM; see the British Cartoon Collection, Library of Congress 3.221. The print is unsigned.

622
heather mcpherson
manager, referencing the caricatures of Sheridan/Pizarro discussed earlier. In The

Rival Managers, the political dimension of the theater and the affinities between parliamentary politics and the stage are clearly articulated and debated by the protagonists. Rather than denouncing the immorality or frivolity of the stage, the print
tacitly acknowledges its heightened cultural and ideological significance in the political maelstrom of the 1790s. Although Pitt and Sheridan appear evenly matched, judging from the body language, it is Pitt who struggles to defend his political turf against
the onslaught of Sheridan and Pizarro.
In Doctor Pizarro Administering to His Patients (figure 7), published 8 July 1799
by Holland, medical themes are introduced into the already volatile political mix.63
Sheridan appears in the guise of the shifty Dr. Pizarro, administering the essence of
loyalty to an immensely fat, ailing Fox, who observes, The ingredients are amazingly
strong, Doctor! Norfolk, standing behind Sheridan, demands another box of Pizarro
pills. At the far right, furtively peering in the window, is George III, who exclaims,
Wonderful great man this Dr. PizarroKills or cures Im toldthese gentlemen were
patients of mine once but could not cure them, so refractory! The kings remarks
about refractory patients that cannot be cured evoke his own repeated bouts of madness. At far left, behind an imposing chest of drawers with the royal arms that contains
patent remedies such as Essence of Loyalty, Court Sticking Plaister, Pizarro Pills, and
Anti-Jacobin Drops, Derby, Burdett, and Erskine wait their turn to be cured. This
print not only exposes Sheridans opportunism, but also trenchantly portrays the shifting alliances and fault lines dividing the Whigs in the unstable political landscape of
the 1790s.
On 1 October 1799 an especially virulent, politically motivated caricature attacking Sheridans hypocrisy and greed appeared in the Anti-Jacobin Review. Although
published anonymously, Pizzarro (figure 8) is attributed to Gillray.64 This vitriolic
satire portrays a disheveled, grotesquely obese Sheridan, dressed as Pizarro. Grasping
two money bags under his left arm, he bestrides Kembles large, irradiated head, which
reads as an oversized penis. In his right hand Sheridan holds up a document that reads:
This season true my Principles Ive sold, To fool the world & pocket Georges gold /
Prolific mine! Anglo-Peruvian food / Provokd my tasteand Candidate I stood, /
While Kemble my support with loyal face / Declares the peoples choice with stagetrick Grace. The caption below reads: In Pizzarros plans observe the Statesmans wisdom guides the poor mans Heart, Taken from Sheridans Pizzarro and adapted to the
63. BM 9406. Though the print is unsigned, the style is reminiscent of Newton, who died in
December 1798. The figure of George III in profile, peering in the window, recalls Newtons notorious
Treason!!! (1798). On Newtons career and collaboration with Holland, see Alexander, Richard Newton.
See also Turner, William Hollands Satirical Print Catalogues, 12738.
64. BM 9417. Joseph Grego attributes it to Gillray. The last of the Sheridan/Pizarro caricatures, it
was published in the Anti-Jacobin Review, 4:318, facing A Critique on the Tragedy of Pizarro, which
attacked the play on literary grounds.

623
figure 6. The Rival Managers (1799; W. Holland). Hand-colored etching, 9 3/4 x 14 in. Library of
Congress.
figure 7. Doctor Pizarro Administering to His Patients (1799; W. Holland). Hand-colored etching with
aquatint, 10 7/8 x 14 3/4 in. Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

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heather mcpherson
English taste.65 This is the most belligerent and explicit attack on Sheridans duplicity
and self-serving exploitation of loyalist rhetoric in Pizarro.
In this caricature, the political implications of the play and the theaters role in
shaping public opinion are highlighted by the inclusion of Kemble, whose heroic performance as Rolla did so much to ensure Pizarros success. In one of the plays climactic
scenes, Rolla risks his life and dies rescuing Alonzos infant son (act 5, scene 2). That
moment was immortalized in Lawrences theatrical painting, Kemble as Rolla (1800;
formerly Kansas City Art Institute), which Boaden rapturously described:
The noble portrait of Mr. Kemble bearing off the child, by Sir Thomas
Lawrence, expresses most accurately the vigour and picturesque beauty of
his action. The Herculean effort of his strengthhis passing the bridge
his preservation of the infant, though himself mortally wounded, excited
a sensation of alarm and agony beyond anything perhaps that the stage
has exhibited. But, in truth, from his entrance to his death, the character
was sustained with a power of elocution, a firmness of deportment, and
an intensity of expression, that he alone could combine together.66
Although the head is recognizably that of Kemble, he has been bulked up and given the
muscular physique of a pugilist, further underscoring Rollas superhuman heroism.67
Moreover, as Shearer West has shown, in the painting Rolla becomes a sort of inverted
Satanic hero, embodying aristocracy, patriotism, and heroic resistance and representing the forces of justice and ordera complex recapitulation of Lawrences paradoxical
political views.68 By contrast, in Gillrays biting caricature Kemble/Rolla is debased
and implicated or subsumed in Sheridans stage trickery and hypocritical machinations, thus undermining the patriotic sentiments and heroism he so vividly embodied
on the stage.
Sheridans loyalist posturing was unconvincing to many. Trying on a Turnd Coat
(figure 9), published 1 August 1799 by Holland, takes aim at Sheridans apparent defection at a moment of crisis for the opposition and references the accusations of treason
that hung over his head in the 1790s.69 This unsigned caricature, like Rollas Address, illustrates how Pizarro had come to encapsulate the unstable political environment of
the late 1790s, in which the ideological struggle hardenedpolitical propaganda proliferated and vilification of the opposition reached new heights.70 During these years
65. The caption modifies Almagros lines from act 1, In Pizarros plans, the statesmans wisdom
guides the warriors valour. The next line echoes the title page of the 1799 edition of the play, which
reads, Taken from the German Drama of Kotzebue and Adapted to the English Stage by Richard
Brinsley Sheridan.
66 Boaden, Memoirs of Kemble, 2:240.
67. Farington, diary entry, dated 11 February 1800, cited in West, Thomas Lawrences Half-History
Portraits, 235, n. 48.
68. See West, Thomas Lawrences Half-History Portraits, 239.
69. See BM 9409.
70. See Donald, Age of Caricature, 14283.

625
figure 8. [James Gillray], Pizzarro (1799; J. Whittle). Etching, 7 11/16 x 9 13/16 in. Courtesy of the Lewis
Walpole Library, Yale University.
figure 9. Trying on a Turnd Coat!! (1799; W. Holland). Hand-colored etching with aquatint,

626
heather mcpherson
the Whigs themselves were engaged in internecine warfare, and caricaturists and pamphleteers were alternately silenced and subsidized by the government. Moreover, the
question of treason and betrayal of loyalties for a higher cause, which took on particular saliency in the context of the Treason Trials of 1794, is foregrounded in Pizarro.71 In
Trying on a Turnd Coat, Sheridan, wearing court dress, and Pitt are represented in a
tailors shop. Pitt adjusts the sleeve of Sheridans changeable coat, which can be turned
from blue to scarlet at will. Like their dramatic counterparts, whose conflicting personal and political loyalties were enacted on the stage, the protagonists in the print are
shown to be equally adept at changing the color of their coats and their political alliances. As Norfolk and Fox look on with alarm, Pitt declares Sheridan fit to go to court.
A clever verse parody published in 1799 echoes or ventriloquizes a number of
the themes exposed in the caricatures of the same year. In More Kotzebue! The Origin of
My Own Pizarro (1799),72 Samuel Argent Bardsley mockingly alludes to Sheridans
dire financial straits, his delight at the acquittal of Hastings (whom he had sought to
convict), his frugality and abstemious look, and his propensity for plagiarism. Salvation arrives through the Kotzebue cure, a drug the king also takes, echoing the medical
themes introduced in Doctor Pizarro (see figure 7, above). Indeed, the language parallels the prints caption, suggesting a possible connection. More Kotzebue concludes
with the triumph of Pizarro, which conjoined loyalty and liberty, and pleased the king.
The actor representing the author speaks the epilogue: thanks! Grateful thanks, to all
within my viewIn thought Im nowA Spaniard in Peru. Boasting of his unbounded riches, the author/Sheridan hypocritically begs the audience to take pity on
Harris and his company and to go to Covent Garden occasionally.73

Having examined the individual caricatures and their multivalent imagery, I would
like to consider the Pizarro series as a whole and what conclusions (if any) can be
drawn about the production, marketing, and broader cultural significance of satirical
prints in the late 1790s. All the leading print publishersHannah Humphrey, Samuel
William Fores, and William Hollandsought to cash in on Pizarros popularity, but
Holland was the dominant player. Although Gillray brilliantly kicked off the series
with Pizarro Contemplating over the Product of His New Peruvian Mine, it was Holland
who pursued the campaign and most creatively mined the personal and political subtexts of Pizarro. In the summer of 1799 he published five hard-hitting, politically contentious satires in rapid succession, ranging from Rollas Address to the Peruvian Army
to Trying on a Turnd Coat. Print publishing was typically a collaborative enterprise.
71. See John Barrell, Imagining the Kings Death: Figurative Treason, Fantasies of Regicide, 179396
(Oxford, 2000).
72. See More Kotzebue! The Origin of My Own Pizarro, A Farce (London, 1799), with a dedication
signed Bam-ley Satiricon, attributed to Samuel Argent Bardsley. This clever verse satire displays an
insiders knowledge of theatrical politics and Sheridans personal foibles and previous plays.
73. Bardsley, More Kotzebue, 2931.

627
Holland apparently supplied the captions and sometimes had a hand in designing the
prints he published. In the 1790s he worked closely with Richard Newton, Frederick
George Byron, and George Murgatroyd Woodward.74 To avoid libel charges and legal
complications, many satirical prints, including the Pizarro plates, were not signed. Although the print runs cannot be determined, the fact that Holland produced so many
related prints in a short period suggests that they were highly marketable.
By the 1790s Holland was established at 55 Oxford Street in the fashionable West
End where he held caricature exhibitions charging one-shilling admission. Newton
recorded the interior of Hollands caricature shop in a lively watercolor sketch (1794;
British Museum). Although Holland did not abandon politics altogether after his release from Newgate, he became more cautious, primarily producing social satires with
broad market appeal.75 Newtons libelous Treason!!! (1798), depicting John Bull farting
in the face of George of III as a horrified Pitt cries Treason, was published under
Newtons name rather than Hollands. In the booming but highly competitive print
market of the 1790s, Holland catered to a diverse clientele, selling his prints individually at a wide range of prices and in volumes consisting of one hundred prints, intended for collectors. Although the hand-colored impressions that collectors favored
were not cheap, the potential audience was far larger. Satirical prints were publicly
displayed in shop windows and sometimes published in periodicals, as two of the
Pizarro satires were.
Despite Hollands radical leanings, his 1794 catalogue identified the Duke of
York and the Prince of Wales, an avid collector of caricatures, as customers.76 The caricatures Pizarro inspired, like Sheridans amphibious play, cut across standard political
and party divisions. Although Sheridan was the primary target, Fox, Pitt, and members of the royal family were also viciously lampooned. Moreover, in the caricatures it
is virtually impossible to differentiate Hollands radical political stance from Foress or
Gillrays more conservative Tory views, since Sheridan is caricatured throughout.
The Pizarro satires also illustrate how artists fed upon and referred back to one
another as well as to earlier prints, confirming that by the 1790s caricature had developed its own distinctive visual syntax and graphic traditions. In the wake of the French
Revolution and the political repression of the 1790s, caricature had become a powerful
political weapon, especially in the hands of Gillray. Rollas image remained a potent and
contested patriotic symbol in the early 1800s as the print entitled The British Rolla, published 27 June 1803, demonstrates. Lord Moira, dressed as Rolla, pompously declaims
to the House of Lords, asserting his patriotism and ardent zeal to serve his Majesty.77
74. These artists figure prominently in Hollands 1794 catalogue. He also sold older stock and
collections of prints by artists such as Hogarth. See Turner, William Hollands Satirical Print
Catalogues, 12930.
75. Ibid., 131. Holland had been imprisoned in 1792 for selling Paines pamphlets.
76. See Turner, William Hollands Satirical Print Catalogues, 13034. George IVs extensive
collection of caricatures is in the Library of Congress.
77. BM 10020. Lord Moira was ridiculed for his pompous self-complacency in the Anti-Jacobin.

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heather mcpherson

In assessing Pizarros extraordinary public reception in the politically charged climate
of the late 1790s, its melodramatic framework should not be overlooked. I would like to
suggest that one key reason Pizarro proved to be such an effective dramatic vehicle was
that it showcased the polarities of good and evil and was packed with emotionally potent scenes, such as Rollas daring rescue of Alonzos infant. Indeed, the play admirably
embodies the aesthetics of astonishment, irreducible Manichaeanism, hyperbolic
rhetoric, and the use of striking tableaux that Peter Brooks has identified as the hallmarks of the melodramatic imagination.78 The melodramatic dimension also helps
explain the plays extraordinary and lasting popularity, which transcended the historical fable and defects of Sheridans text.
Not coincidentally, caricature, like melodrama, was a popular but frequently
denigrated art form, a hybrid phenomenon that could not easily be suppressed or
controlled and that threatened existing aesthetic and political hierarchies. In the
xenophobic post-revolutionary atmosphere of the 1790s, Kotzebues wildly popular
German dramas were denounced by conservative critics, who took exception to their
immorality and their politically subversive content.79 It was Sheridans particular genius to grasp both the commercial potential and the patriotic appeal of Kotzebues
Pizarro, which made it the perfect vehicle for repackaging contemporary political
events as theatrical spectacle and for refurbishing his own tarnished personal reputation. As John Britton observed, Mr. Sheridan has perhaps done more for the minister
and government by the loyal sentiments in this play than all the pamphlets, newspapers, and anti-Jacobins, during the present war.80
In contrast to the caricatures of Sheridan discussed so far, the theatrical portraits of Kemble as Rolla and Siddons as Elvira (1799; figures 10, 11, on pp. 63031), designed and published by Robert Dighton, are more celebratory than satirical.81
Interestingly, they also corroborate Siddonss penetrating discussion of the stylization
of actingwhat she termed the quality of abstraction, which she and Kemble excelled at and which Kotzebues dramas and the enlarged space of Drury Lane demanded.82 That quality was particularly effective in an operatic spectacle such as
Pizarro, which depended so heavily on grandiose scenic effects and heightened emotion writ large. In the Dighton prints, obviously designed as pendants, the actors are
depicted in heroic profile view, gesturing dramatically, effectively freezing and abstracting the narrative action. Siddonss majestic, emotionally moving portrayal of
Elvira, as Kemble famously observed, made a heroine of a soldiers trull.83 Astounding even Sheridan, Siddons raised Elvira to sublime tragic heights. In act 3, scene 3, the
78. See Peter Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination (New Haven, Conn., 1976).
79. West, Thomas Lawrences Half-History Portraits, 23537 n. 52. As West notes, Kotzebue was
arrested on suspicion of Jacobinism when he visited St. Petersburg in 1800.
80. Britton, Sheridan and Kotzebue, 142.
81. BM 9436, 9437. It is not clear why the print of Siddons was not issued until December 1799.
82. See Loftis, Sheridan and the Drama, ix.
83. Boaden, Memoirs of Kemble, 2:239.

629
regal Siddons/Elvira points commandingly and extols Pizarro to greatness. Kemble, in

quasi-classical dress with a heavy gold belt and chains and an exotic feathered headdress, gestures upward, reciting the famous lines from act 2, scene 2, We serve a King
whom we lovea God whom we adore. Interestingly, in the caption, Dighton has substituted King for Monarch, which appeared in the printed edition, underscoring
the loyalist message.84
Dightons heroic theatrical prints elude easy classification. Neither conventional
theatrical portraits nor satires, they slip uneasily between aesthetic and generic categories. Like Lawrences half-history painting of Kemble, discussed above, or the 1804
print depicting a command performance of Pizarro at Covent Garden, they served to
publicize and commemorate the play. The monumental figures of Siddons and Kemble, silhouetted against a blank ground, are reified and aestheticized, their gestures
frozen and timeless. I would like to suggest that Dightons dramatically staged portraits, like Sheridans ambitious operatic spectacle, are high-blown artistic-theatrical
hybrids that reach for the sublime through the popular vernacular.
Ultimately, the caricatures Pizarro inspired and the contested accounts that appeared in the press attest to the complex dialogic response it engendered across a broad
sociopolitical spectrum. One of the centurys most extraordinary cultural and theatrical phenomena, Pizarro testifies to the stages power to galvanize artists and public sentiment in a time of political crisis and to Sheridans uncanny ability to astonish, dazzle,
and discombobulate his contemporaries. More than half a century later, Charles Kean
revived Pizarro. Seeking to exemplify the customs, ceremonies, and religion of Peru at
the time of the Spanish invasion, he incorporated authentic historical detail and updated the settings, repackaging Sheridans patriotic pantomime for the Victorian stage
as educational entertainment.85
university of alabama at birmingham
abstract
Pizarro, Sheridans adaptation of Kotzebues Die Spanier in Peru, opened at Drury Lane on 24 May 1799
and took London by storm. Focusing on Sheridans phenomenally popular play as a case study in lateeighteenth-century cultural politics, Heather McPherson considers how theatrical and political identities and warring ideologies were dramatically re-envisioned and conflated both on the stage and in
caricatures. Beginning in early June, a dozen satirical prints appeared in rapid succession, in which contemporary politics were fused with melodramatic spectacle, and real political figures reappeared in the
guise of theatrical characters. The series of caricatures Pizarro inspired and the contested accounts that
appeared in the press attest to the complex dialogic response it engendered across a broad sociopolitical
spectrum. Keywords: Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Pizarro, August von Kotzebue, Drury Lane Theatre,
James Gillray
84. West, Thomas Lawrences Half-History Portraits, 237.

85. See Charles Kean, Shakespeare and Sheridan Plays Arranged by Charles Kean (London, n.d.),
vix. Pizarro was revived at the Princess Theatre in 1856 with Kean as Rolla and his wife as Elvira. Kean
supplemented the dramatic text with detailed historical notes.

630
heather mcpherson
figure 10. Robert Dighton, John Philip Kemble as Rolla (1799; Dighton). Hand-colored etching,

631
figure 11. Robert Dighton, Sarah Siddons as Elvira (1799; Dighton). Hand-colored etching, 8 x 6 1/2 in.
Witt Library, Courtauld Institute of Art, London.


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Caricature, Cultural Politics, and the Stage: The Case of Pizarro

Author(s): Heather McPherson

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