Hudibras and the Lawyer, plate twelve from Hudibras

Museum record 184617: Hudibras and the Lawyer, plate twelve from Hudibras by William Hogarth. A verified entry point for discovery.

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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…