Hudibras and the Lawyer, plate twelve from Hudibras
William Hogarth
1725–1726
- Medium
- Etching and engraving in black on cream paper edge, mounted on cream wove paper
- Dimensions
- Image: 24.5 × 34.4 cm (9 11/16 × 13 9/16 in.); Plate: 27 × 35.3 cm (10 11/16 × 13 15/16 in.); Primary support: 27.2 × 35.6 cm (10 3/4 × 14 1/16 in.); Secondary support: 36.8 × 47.6 cm (14 1/2 × 18 3/4 in.)
- Genre
- engraving
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago
Tags
engravingprintprints and drawingetchingpaper (fiber product)
About
William Hogarth here depicted Hudibras’s visit to a lawyer who encourages the knight to write a letter to the woman he is courting. Just as Hudibras is a play on the popular figure of the “heroic knight,” Samuel Butler used his past experience in law to satirize the lawyer. Hogarth translated Butler’s humorous critique into the engraving by showing a robed and wigged lawyer sitting in his office like a king on his throne. Hogarth’s engravings of Butler’s satirical epic summarize the social and political environment in England with the same cleverness and wit seen in his later works, including the Marriage à la Mode and A Harlot’s Progress.
