UNRECORDED. NOT IN OCLC OR COPAC.
A satirical broadside on the controversial Bristol election of 1837 which uses the imagery and text of Shakespeare’s Macbeth to attack the Tory opposition to the victory of the Liberal candidate Francis Henry FitzHardinge Berkeley.
The engraved vignette at the head of the sheet (signed “Bagshaw fecit”) shows three liberal supporters (Bush, Cookson and Payne) as witches dancing around a cauldron with bubbles rising from it reading “Lies”, “Slander” and “Perjury.” A sun in the sky reads “Berkeley for Ever” in support of the Tory candidate.
The text beneath, titled “The Weird Three” is set out as the first act of a play and begins:
“Scene I. - Thundering shouts from Berkeley
1st Witch. For what shall we three meet again,
To blast, calumniate and stain…“
The “play” continues in much the same vein with repeated allusions to Shakespeare’s play, but often with the setting relocated to Bristol:
“3rd Witch. Let us meet ere set of sun.
1st Witch. Where?
2nd Witch. On Clifton Down“ [Clifton is an inner suburb of Bristol with many grand houses].
Later in the act the three “witches” chant:
“Double, double, without much trouble
Tory Gold will make all bubble…“
