"This is a sorry sight!" Macbeth, scene: a lodging in Bond Street. [graphic]

"A haggard-looking man is seated in profile to the left in an armchair beside a small table on which are two candles (which light the room), a medicine phial, &c, and his breeches. He wears shirt, night-cap, ungartered stockings, and slippers. He regards his hands with an expression of intense melancholy. The room and its contents show that he is a fashionable rake struck down by disease. A fire burns in the grate; on the chimney-piece (left) is a clock surmounted by a figure of Time as a winged skeleton with a scythe. Above is a picture, the right part alone visible; it is a free rendering of pl. iii of Hogarth's 'Rake's Progress' (BMSat 2188) showing the ballad-singer bawling the 'Black Joke'. The frame of another picture is inscribed 'Macies et nova febrium': Pandora kneels holding open a box inscribed 'Pandora' into which Mercury (cf. BMSat 7592) drops a black spot. Above this is a tailless bird in a cage. A sash-window with a festooned curtain is partly shuttered. On the wall (right) is a large hat, a sword-belt, scabbard, and broken sword, and a pair of pistols. Below is a close-stool; torn papers lie on the floor, with a torn book: 'Fashionable Cypriad'. In the foreground is a dog. The floor is carpeted. Beneath the table is engraved: '"Non vanae redeat Sanguis imagini, "Quant virgd semel horridd "Nigro compulerit Mercurius gregi."'."--British Museum online catalogue