Art Institute of Chicago

Hudibras and the Lawyer, plate twelve from Hudibras

William Hogarth

Date

February 1725/26

Medium

Etching and engraving in black on cream paper edge, mounted on cream wove paper

Culture

England

Department

Prints and Drawings

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

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 .

The authoritative record is held by Art Institute of Chicago. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.