_March 20, 1786_--'The Royal Toast--Fat, Fair, and Forty,' is a fancy portrait of Mrs. Fitzherbert, very stout, a fact as truthful as her age, which was but thirty. _March 21, 1786_--'Wedding Night, or the Fashionable Frolic.' The Prince and Mrs. Fitzherbert are dancing, and George Hanger is playing the 'Black Joke' on a fiddle. A marriage certificate, torn up, lies on the floor. _March 21, 1786_--'The Lovers' Leap.' The Prince and Mrs. Fitzherbert are preparing to jump over a broom (which is said to be the gipsies' marriage ceremony), which lies on the floor between them. George Hanger is pushing the Prince on, and a cat is jumping out of a bag. Another version of this, by Gillray, was published on the same date, and is thus described in Wright and Grego's 'Gillray': '_21 Mar., 1786._--_'Twas nobody saw the Lovers' Leap and let the Cat out of the Bag._ This title, which refers to the first disclosure of the scandal, is literally treated in the print. Fox appears as "nobody," and a cat is seen escaping from a bag. The Whig chief, with whom, as the occasional companion of the young Prince's excesses, the public were not slow to connect the transaction, is encouraging Florizel to "leap over the broomstick" with Mrs. Fitzherbert. The ex favourites, in a second apartment, surmounted by the Prince's crest, tranquilly regard the coming change. "All I desire of mortal man is to love whilst he can," says Perdita. "Well said, Robby," remarks a gentleman at table: "his father will broomstick him!"' The best etching on the subject is dated March 27, 1786, and is called 'Wife and no Wife; or, A Trip to the Continent.' The Prince is about to put the ring on Mrs. Fitzherbert's hand, and Fox is giving her away. Hanger and Sheridan are witnesses. Burke, as a Jesuit, is reading the marriage service, and Lord North, as a coachman, is fast asleep. [Illustration: WIFE AND NO WIFE; OR, A TRIP TO THE CONTINENT.] Then we have on May 1, 1786, 'The April Fool, or the Follies of a Night, as performed at the Theatre Royal, C----n House, for the Benefit of the Widow Wadman.' The Prince, Mrs. Fitzherbert, and George Hanger are dancing, while Fox is drumming with a pistol on a warming-pan, exclaiming, 'Damme, but 'tis sublime;' and Burke, who says, 'Burn the pan, is it not beautiful?' plays on a gridiron with a pair of tongs. On the walls are two scenes from _Hamlet_: one where Polonius says to the King, 'I will be brief, your noble son is mad;' the other where Hamlet says to Ophelia: 'He may not, as inferior persons do, Carve for himself, for on his choice depends The sanity and health of the whole state.' On the ground lie two plays, 'A Bold Stroke for a Wife'[48] and 'The Clandestine Marriage.'[49]