0:00:02 > 0:00:04This programme contains very strong language & some scenes of a sexual nature
0:00:04 > 0:00:07Today we think we live in times of great rudeness.
0:00:07 > 0:00:13But travel back 250 years and witness a Britain openly, gloriously
0:00:13 > 0:00:15and often shockingly rude.
0:00:19 > 0:00:21Then we revelled in mocking and ridiculing
0:00:21 > 0:00:24the great and the not so good...
0:00:24 > 0:00:28rude about our politicians and royal family.
0:00:28 > 0:00:32He's just a pig. He's just a greedy, bastard pig and look at him.
0:00:32 > 0:00:34We loved to sing rude songs...
0:00:34 > 0:00:36the bawdier the better.
0:00:36 > 0:00:41# One for population. #
0:00:41 > 0:00:46We could be rude malicious and rude downright offensive... in rhyme.
0:00:46 > 0:00:51Perhaps you have no better luck in the knack of rhyming than of fucking.
0:00:51 > 0:00:54We took pleasure in a rude humour...
0:00:54 > 0:00:56of pee and poo.
0:00:56 > 0:00:58THEY LAUGH
0:00:59 > 0:01:04And some of us had a taste for a lewd rude that went all the way.
0:01:04 > 0:01:07You chuckle or sometimes actually could be quite shocked.
0:01:08 > 0:01:11During the hundred odd years of the Georgian Age,
0:01:11 > 0:01:16all manner of rudeness thrived in opposition to respectable society's
0:01:16 > 0:01:18demand for manners and morality.
0:01:21 > 0:01:26This 18th century rude culture of pictures, words, song and theatre
0:01:26 > 0:01:31crossed boundaries between high and low art.
0:01:31 > 0:01:35Then we had a fierce belief in our right to be rude.
0:01:35 > 0:01:39Then we were one nation under the Rude...
0:01:39 > 0:01:42Rude Britannia.
0:01:42 > 0:01:44Rude Britannia.
0:01:44 > 0:01:50A History most satirical, bawdy, lewd and offensive.
0:01:50 > 0:01:56# Rule Britannia Britannia rule the waves
0:01:56 > 0:02:01# Britons never, ever, ever will be slaves. #
0:02:01 > 0:02:05In 1707, following an Act of Union with Scotland,
0:02:05 > 0:02:08a United Kingdom was created.
0:02:09 > 0:02:14The rude heart and lungs of the new nation was London.
0:02:14 > 0:02:20Dynamic, exciting, busy, chaotic, noisy and smelly -
0:02:20 > 0:02:22where rich and poor collided.
0:02:26 > 0:02:28Growing up in London, first in Smithfield,
0:02:28 > 0:02:31then working as a young artist in Covent Garden,
0:02:31 > 0:02:34was the first chronicler of Georgian Rude,
0:02:34 > 0:02:36William Hogarth.
0:02:38 > 0:02:40Hogarth definitely had a taste for the rude.
0:02:40 > 0:02:45He was a stroppy individual and he had a scar on his forehead
0:02:45 > 0:02:48which he showed in his portraits as if to say,
0:02:48 > 0:02:50I can keep up with the best of you.
0:02:50 > 0:02:52We know that he loved the taverns
0:02:52 > 0:02:56around Covent Garden and Leicester Fields, the Rose Tavern,
0:02:56 > 0:03:00and he chatted to the...he knew the girls, he knew the bawds,
0:03:00 > 0:03:03he knew the pimps, he knew the sort of hustlers.
0:03:03 > 0:03:06Hogarth was just such a bloody good artist.
0:03:06 > 0:03:09As an engraver, he could combine his skills
0:03:09 > 0:03:12that he had learned as an apprentice engraver
0:03:12 > 0:03:15with a kind of satirical piss-taking sensibility.
0:03:15 > 0:03:17So, using those skills,
0:03:17 > 0:03:20he could then actually observe the world around him.
0:03:20 > 0:03:24He used to walk down the street doing literal thumbnail sketches,
0:03:24 > 0:03:26he used to draw on his thumbnail cos he'd see somebody
0:03:26 > 0:03:29he liked the look of and put them into these tableaux.
0:03:31 > 0:03:34Hogarth used the high art of painting
0:03:34 > 0:03:39to capture the rude energy to be found on the streets of London.
0:03:39 > 0:03:43In 1733 he painted the riotous carnival which took place in
0:03:43 > 0:03:48Borough, near St George's Church on the south bank of the Thames.
0:03:48 > 0:03:51This was Southwark Fair.
0:03:57 > 0:04:01The sheer celebration, really, of the diversity of types
0:04:01 > 0:04:05and of people and of incidents and noises and of action,
0:04:05 > 0:04:07you can almost hear the bubble of noise,
0:04:07 > 0:04:11the banging of drums, of course, at the centre of the picture.
0:04:16 > 0:04:20You've got stories being told, consequences being explained.
0:04:20 > 0:04:23Details here, there and everywhere. It's a feast.
0:04:23 > 0:04:25The wonderful thing about Hogarth
0:04:25 > 0:04:29is he works on a visual feast and they are there to be read.
0:04:32 > 0:04:37If we look closer, we can see the rude illicit pleasures of the fair.
0:04:40 > 0:04:44There's a woman dicing on top of what looks like a crate or a table
0:04:44 > 0:04:48and you get the sense that there's this bumpkin
0:04:48 > 0:04:52who's just arrived from the sticks who's having a go on the dice
0:04:52 > 0:04:55whereas a smaller kid, it looks like, at his elbow,
0:04:55 > 0:04:58is tugging on his sleeve as if to say,
0:04:58 > 0:05:00"Don't, Dad. Don't start gambling".
0:05:10 > 0:05:14There's an extraordinary thing where people are looking in to,
0:05:14 > 0:05:17it looks like a dog kennel but it's a peep show.
0:05:17 > 0:05:21One does wonder, what exactly are they looking at?
0:05:28 > 0:05:31There is a great sense of excitement
0:05:31 > 0:05:37and carnival, but also something slightly dangerous.
0:05:37 > 0:05:40Everything is on the verge of collapse.
0:05:40 > 0:05:43The man is falling from the wire
0:05:43 > 0:05:46and there was a case of that very near the time.
0:05:46 > 0:05:50The stage on which the Fall of Bajazet is about to be presented
0:05:50 > 0:05:52is actually falling and the more you look,
0:05:52 > 0:05:56you realise it's falling on to a china shop underneath.
0:05:56 > 0:05:57BREAKING GLASS
0:06:00 > 0:06:03Southwark Fair was first a colour painting
0:06:03 > 0:06:05then became a black and white print.
0:06:05 > 0:06:09To make a living, Hogarth made engravings of his work.
0:06:09 > 0:06:13Print copies were then made from these engraved images.
0:06:13 > 0:06:17It was these mass produced pictures that were sold to the public.
0:06:17 > 0:06:21So Hogarth made Southwark Fair a portrait of the city
0:06:21 > 0:06:24that all Londoners could recognise and share...
0:06:24 > 0:06:26and want to own.
0:06:26 > 0:06:30Probably each person in it is a particular person.
0:06:30 > 0:06:35Is identifiable as a semi-celebrity of the day.
0:06:35 > 0:06:37The prize fighter sitting on his horse.
0:06:37 > 0:06:41The pantomime actor in his absurd regalia.
0:06:41 > 0:06:43These are particular people.
0:06:43 > 0:06:46It's the pleasure of identification
0:06:46 > 0:06:49which is very much part of what 18th century satire was about.
0:06:49 > 0:06:54The delight of seeing people you knew or knew of in them.
0:06:58 > 0:07:02Hogarth made sure his prints were rude bawdy and rude lewd,
0:07:02 > 0:07:07with a visual wit and attention to detail which heightened the humour.
0:07:09 > 0:07:13I think part of the pleasure of looking at Hogarth prints
0:07:13 > 0:07:15is finding the extra little story.
0:07:15 > 0:07:19These are often sexy little narratives
0:07:19 > 0:07:22so that you notice what is going on in the corner.
0:07:22 > 0:07:26You chuckle or sometimes you could actually be quite shocked.
0:07:26 > 0:07:28BELCHING AND GIGGLING
0:07:28 > 0:07:31BABY CRIES
0:07:31 > 0:07:33GASPS
0:07:41 > 0:07:45Yet Hogarth knew he had to be careful with all this rudeness.
0:07:45 > 0:07:48In the 1730's he produced a series of prints -
0:07:48 > 0:07:51The Harlot's Progress, then the Rakes Progress.
0:07:51 > 0:07:55Racy stories with moral conclusions, they revealed in Hogarth
0:07:55 > 0:07:59and his public a tension between the Rude and the Prude.
0:07:59 > 0:08:03He lives in a world where the Church is still powerful,
0:08:03 > 0:08:08where the dominant voices are elite aristocratic gentry.
0:08:08 > 0:08:11Where the big City merchants are on the up and up
0:08:11 > 0:08:15and have their own forms of puritan respectability.
0:08:15 > 0:08:17He's got to sell to these people.
0:08:22 > 0:08:27In order to, as it were, launch them properly on the public
0:08:27 > 0:08:29he had to say these are moral tales.
0:08:29 > 0:08:32But what people really enjoyed, of course,
0:08:32 > 0:08:35was actually all the wickedness and the bad things and the rudeness
0:08:35 > 0:08:38that happened before they become punished.
0:08:54 > 0:08:57In the Rake's Progress,
0:08:57 > 0:09:03the orgy in the tavern in Drury Lane where the Rake is having it away
0:09:03 > 0:09:08really in a really quite brilliant composition of tavern mayhem
0:09:08 > 0:09:14with dancing girls, prostitutes with bare breasts spitting at each other.
0:09:14 > 0:09:18These kinds of things are titillating and, in that sense,
0:09:18 > 0:09:23he's playing to one's prurient curiosity about low life.
0:09:24 > 0:09:27It's slightly News Of The World-y, you know?
0:09:27 > 0:09:30It's like, "Let us expose the shocking horrors
0:09:30 > 0:09:33"that are going on in the smart brothels of the West End."
0:09:33 > 0:09:36"Oh, they're going to get punished"! So there is an ambivalence.
0:09:38 > 0:09:42These guys who may be depicted initially as having a jolly time
0:09:42 > 0:09:43come to a sticky end.
0:09:43 > 0:09:45They have to come to a sticky end.
0:09:45 > 0:09:48The harlot dies of syphilis.
0:09:48 > 0:09:51The Rake dies of madness.
0:09:51 > 0:09:53SCREAMING
0:10:18 > 0:10:22In the art of Hogarth you not only see Rude London,
0:10:22 > 0:10:24you can almost hear the city as well.
0:10:24 > 0:10:27SINGING
0:10:29 > 0:10:33Look at his prints, and ballad singers turn up again and again.
0:10:33 > 0:10:37Their lewd and bawdy songs the soundtrack of his urban landscape.
0:10:37 > 0:10:40# Thy beauty doth so please my eye... #
0:10:40 > 0:10:43You could see ballad singers on every major corner battling it out,
0:10:43 > 0:10:48one against the other, in part to be more rude than the next.
0:10:48 > 0:10:52Every alehouse would have ballad singers coming through,
0:10:52 > 0:10:54singing ballads in exchange for a few pence.
0:10:54 > 0:10:56# With you to lie
0:10:56 > 0:10:59# So if you lie with me one night... #
0:10:59 > 0:11:01Visitors who'd come from abroad say,
0:11:01 > 0:11:03"You can't go to any corner without finding one."
0:11:03 > 0:11:08Any populous place where the ballad singer is likely
0:11:08 > 0:11:13to find a market for their products, there are famous places.
0:11:13 > 0:11:17Blackfriars, Covent Garden, the Strand.
0:11:17 > 0:11:20There are places that they congregated.
0:11:20 > 0:11:24Obviously you'd try to find a pitch, usually with your back to a wall
0:11:24 > 0:11:28so there was an audio effect, reflection of the sound.
0:11:28 > 0:11:31Not too noisy but the early modern city was a noisy place anyway.
0:11:31 > 0:11:34BABY CRIES
0:11:34 > 0:11:36MUSIC PLAYS
0:11:55 > 0:11:58Some of the ballads sung on the streets of London are so rude
0:11:58 > 0:12:01that I'm, frankly, embarrassed by them.
0:12:01 > 0:12:03They are absolutely explicit.
0:12:03 > 0:12:05In all ways.
0:12:05 > 0:12:09One rude song sung on street corners and in taverns was Put In All.
0:12:09 > 0:12:14# I hope my neck and breast Put in all, put in all
0:12:14 > 0:12:17# Lie open to your chest Put in all
0:12:17 > 0:12:22# The young man was in heat The maid did soundly sweat
0:12:22 > 0:12:24# A little further get!
0:12:24 > 0:12:26# Put in all, put in all. #
0:12:26 > 0:12:28They would not just explicit
0:12:28 > 0:12:31in terms of the words that were being expressed.
0:12:31 > 0:12:34They were explicit in terms of the actions that went with them.
0:12:34 > 0:12:39As female ballad singers lifted their skirts as illustrations
0:12:39 > 0:12:42for the kinds of content that many of the ballads contained.
0:12:42 > 0:12:47# According to her will Put in all, put in all
0:12:47 > 0:12:52# The young man tried his skill Put in all... #
0:12:52 > 0:12:57Put In All cheekily teases men about their sexual anxieties.
0:12:57 > 0:13:05# For an inch, they'll take an L Put in at all, put in all. #
0:13:05 > 0:13:08It's that moment when you find out you're in the secret majority
0:13:08 > 0:13:10and you can relax and think,
0:13:10 > 0:13:12"Everybody else is worrying about this too.
0:13:12 > 0:13:15"We can all relax together and sing our ditty, Put In All,"
0:13:15 > 0:13:18you know. Because lots of fellas worry about this.
0:13:18 > 0:13:21They worried about it then and they worry about it now.
0:13:21 > 0:13:23# You had your freedom... #
0:13:23 > 0:13:25To help them make a living,
0:13:25 > 0:13:29ballad singers sold printed versions of their songs.
0:13:29 > 0:13:34But even here again there was little attempt to disguise their rudeness.
0:13:34 > 0:13:40Use of the common four-letter words for body parts were, sometimes
0:13:40 > 0:13:43interestingly in the printed version, somewhat avoided.
0:13:43 > 0:13:48C - - T would be a nod towards being polite,
0:13:48 > 0:13:51but really, I mean, when it rhymes with blunt
0:13:51 > 0:13:53you know what they're on about.
0:13:53 > 0:13:55All this immorality from ballad singers was
0:13:55 > 0:14:01a cause of much dismay and concern to moral guardians and law makers.
0:14:01 > 0:14:04You even get books of instructions to servants, where they say,
0:14:04 > 0:14:08"When you go on an errand for your mistress, you go straight there,
0:14:08 > 0:14:11"straight, you don't go and listen to a ballad singer.
0:14:11 > 0:14:14"Not only will that waste your time, it will corrupt your morals."
0:14:14 > 0:14:15That sort of thing.
0:14:15 > 0:14:17BELL CHIMES
0:14:19 > 0:14:23We know from prosecutions for nuisance, for example,
0:14:23 > 0:14:28that in 1775 there were five ballad singing women every night
0:14:28 > 0:14:31in St Paul's churchyard who committed a nuisance
0:14:31 > 0:14:35because they enticed the shop girls and the girls of the town
0:14:35 > 0:14:40to come and listen to them and to laugh at their sheer rudeness
0:14:40 > 0:14:43and sexual explicitness of their songs.
0:14:50 > 0:14:53Rude culture not only thrived on the streets of London.
0:14:53 > 0:14:57You could also find it, alive and kicking, by buying
0:14:57 > 0:15:02a ticket and stepping inside any of the capital's theatres.
0:15:02 > 0:15:06Rude places that Hogarth also knew and drew.
0:15:06 > 0:15:08APPLAUSE
0:15:11 > 0:15:14Theatre is one of the only art forms which brings together
0:15:14 > 0:15:16everyone in 18th century London.
0:15:16 > 0:15:19From apprentices sitting at the top in the gallery,
0:15:19 > 0:15:22very squashed in, very dirty, very smelly ...
0:15:22 > 0:15:24to the aristocrats sitting in the boxes.
0:15:26 > 0:15:29People were allowed to enter in the middle of plays.
0:15:29 > 0:15:32In fact, they had an incentive to do so,
0:15:32 > 0:15:36because it cost them less if they came in just for the last act.
0:15:36 > 0:15:40People would talk and heckle and discuss things
0:15:40 > 0:15:42and walk around during the plays.
0:15:42 > 0:15:45AUDIENCE BOO
0:15:45 > 0:15:49In the early 18th century audiences were used to barracking
0:15:49 > 0:15:53exotic characters on stage, like those found in Italian operas.
0:15:55 > 0:15:59Then a play appeared that was a true piece of British theatre.
0:16:05 > 0:16:08This was The Beggar's Opera by John Gay.
0:16:13 > 0:16:16As the curtain went up on Gay's satirical masterpiece,
0:16:16 > 0:16:18audiences were in for a surprise.
0:16:18 > 0:16:20Here on stage were rude common people,
0:16:20 > 0:16:23just like those found in a Hogarth print.
0:16:23 > 0:16:27Well, the first character you see is a beggar.
0:16:27 > 0:16:29Because this has been advertised as an opera,
0:16:29 > 0:16:33it must've been an extraordinary surprise to the audience
0:16:33 > 0:16:36to be sitting in the theatre at Lincoln's Inn Fields,
0:16:36 > 0:16:39and to look up and to see a beggar on stage.
0:16:39 > 0:16:41This was an event that no-one had seen before.
0:16:41 > 0:16:43It was something quite new.
0:16:43 > 0:16:47The Beggar's Opera is rude because it's set in a prison,
0:16:47 > 0:16:50it's heroes aren't kings and queens,
0:16:50 > 0:16:54it's heroes are kind of thieves, highwaymen and pickpockets.
0:16:54 > 0:16:56The Beggar's Opera became a smash hit
0:16:56 > 0:16:59precisely because it was Rude Theatre.
0:16:59 > 0:17:02Rude, because in a space used to high art,
0:17:02 > 0:17:06audiences now saw low common characters on stage.
0:17:06 > 0:17:11And rude, because they were singing songs that were biting satires
0:17:11 > 0:17:13on 18th century life.
0:17:13 > 0:17:18# When you sense you're the age Be cautious and say it
0:17:18 > 0:17:22# Lest the courtiers offended might be
0:17:22 > 0:17:26# If you mention vice or bribe
0:17:26 > 0:17:30# 'Tis so pat to all the tribe
0:17:30 > 0:17:35# Each cries That was levelled at me! #
0:17:35 > 0:17:37Gay had this brilliant idea
0:17:37 > 0:17:41which has been duplicated often since and is still duplicated.
0:17:41 > 0:17:43Which is to put in to his play
0:17:43 > 0:17:47lots of the most popular songs of the day.
0:17:47 > 0:17:51I mean, they do it in Shrek, he discovered this art first.
0:17:51 > 0:17:55So, I think, literally audiences sang along or hummed along
0:17:55 > 0:17:59because often he put rather new words to these tunes.
0:18:02 > 0:18:06These new lyrics attacked the double standards of Georgian life
0:18:06 > 0:18:12where Gay saw one law for the rich, another for the poor.
0:18:14 > 0:18:18# Since laws were made for ev'ry Degree
0:18:18 > 0:18:22# To curb Vice in others as well as me
0:18:22 > 0:18:28# I wonder we han't better Company Upon Tyburn Tree
0:18:28 > 0:18:33# But gold from lock and take out the sting
0:18:33 > 0:18:37# And if rich men like us were to swing
0:18:37 > 0:18:42# T'would thin the land such numbers to string
0:18:42 > 0:18:48# Upon Tyburn Tree. #
0:18:50 > 0:18:52This reference to Tyburn Tree
0:18:52 > 0:18:55would send a chill down the necks of Gay's audience.
0:18:55 > 0:18:58Tyburn, near modern day Marble Arch,
0:18:58 > 0:19:01was the notorious place for public hangings in London.
0:19:03 > 0:19:06But the Beggars Opera was much more than rude satire
0:19:06 > 0:19:08on the wider injustices of Georgian Britain.
0:19:08 > 0:19:12Audiences knew that the play was also an attack on specific
0:19:12 > 0:19:15politicians, their corruption and many scandals.
0:19:17 > 0:19:20It was generally recognised
0:19:20 > 0:19:23that the play lampooned the politicians of the day,
0:19:23 > 0:19:26that although it was an opera about thieves and highwaymen,
0:19:26 > 0:19:29these were really the thieves and highwaymen
0:19:29 > 0:19:30who were running the country
0:19:30 > 0:19:34and who were often actually sitting in the audience,
0:19:34 > 0:19:38Robert Walpole went to one of the first performances of the play.
0:19:38 > 0:19:42Walpole, the Prime Minister, was seen in all the key characters -
0:19:42 > 0:19:49Peachum the thief taker, Lockit the jailer and Macheath the Highwayman.
0:19:49 > 0:19:53What Gay does so brilliantly is to suggest to us
0:19:53 > 0:19:57that the world of politics is a world which,
0:19:57 > 0:20:00under the appearance of respectability,
0:20:00 > 0:20:04is in fact no more than pervasive corruption.
0:20:09 > 0:20:13Also in the 1730's, from a theatre on the Haymarket,
0:20:13 > 0:20:17came further provocations to the Prime Minister and his cronies.
0:20:17 > 0:20:22Plays such as the Historical Register For The Year 1736
0:20:22 > 0:20:24were written by Henry Fielding.
0:20:24 > 0:20:26His attacks on political sleaze
0:20:26 > 0:20:29were even more direct than those of Gay in The Beggar's Opera.
0:20:29 > 0:20:35So, faced with this, Walpole ordered that Rude Theatre now be dealt with.
0:20:37 > 0:20:41The government essentially decided to to restrict the freedom
0:20:41 > 0:20:44that Fielding was enjoying and introduce licensing,
0:20:44 > 0:20:48so that you had to submit your plays to a government censor
0:20:48 > 0:20:50before they were performed.
0:20:53 > 0:20:58Places such as the Haymarket no longer had a licence to perform.
0:20:58 > 0:21:02Importantly, it put Rude playwrights out of business,
0:21:02 > 0:21:06so it's a tremendously important moment in the history of theatre.
0:21:06 > 0:21:11It's a very successful shutting down of the Rude in London.
0:21:18 > 0:21:21But just as Rude Theatre was killed off,
0:21:21 > 0:21:25so another part of London's cultural life continued in rude health.
0:21:27 > 0:21:29East of Theatre land was Grub Street,
0:21:29 > 0:21:33a meeting place for writers, of taverns and coffee houses
0:21:33 > 0:21:37that became a byword for bookish rudeness.
0:21:39 > 0:21:42Literary London was really rude, it was a vicious place.
0:21:42 > 0:21:45People beat each other up, poisoned each other,
0:21:45 > 0:21:48slandered each other in poems, slagged each other off,
0:21:48 > 0:21:50bitched about each other, maligned each other.
0:21:50 > 0:21:52It was extraordinarily vicious.
0:21:54 > 0:21:58As long as writers avoided treasonous high politics and didn't
0:21:58 > 0:22:02doubt the Lord, the law allowed literary bitching to flourish.
0:22:04 > 0:22:08Suddenly, by accident as a matter of fact,
0:22:08 > 0:22:11the licensing of print disappears.
0:22:11 > 0:22:14So, no longer do you have to get the permission
0:22:14 > 0:22:17of a government operative in order to print anything.
0:22:17 > 0:22:20There is an extraordinary freedom to print whatever you want.
0:22:20 > 0:22:22To read, therefore, whatever you want.
0:22:22 > 0:22:27The laws governing print are mostly to do with sedition
0:22:27 > 0:22:30to matters of politics and religion,
0:22:30 > 0:22:34but if you want to be extremely rude about a particular person,
0:22:34 > 0:22:37legally there's very little to stop you.
0:22:40 > 0:22:43Exploiting this freedom was a master of rude words
0:22:43 > 0:22:47who lived in some splendour by the Thames at Twickenham,
0:22:47 > 0:22:51far from the noise and confusion of London town.
0:22:51 > 0:22:56Poet Alexander Pope deployed rudeness as his weapon of choice
0:22:56 > 0:23:00to give the high art of his verse a sharper edge.
0:23:03 > 0:23:05His invective, and there is plenty of it,
0:23:05 > 0:23:09he does dish it out, is so poised and elegant.
0:23:09 > 0:23:13A sense of him being a kind of wind-up merchant.
0:23:13 > 0:23:15INSECT BUZZES
0:23:15 > 0:23:20Pope was deliciously vicious when he used metaphor to shrink
0:23:20 > 0:23:25his enemy, Lord John Hervey, down to insect-like size.
0:23:26 > 0:23:30"Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings
0:23:30 > 0:23:34"This painted child of dirt that stinks and stings
0:23:34 > 0:23:37"Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys
0:23:37 > 0:23:40"Yet wit ne'er tastes and beauty ne'er enjoys
0:23:40 > 0:23:43"So well-bred Spaniels civilly delight
0:23:43 > 0:23:47"In mumbling of the game they dare not bite."
0:23:52 > 0:23:56Pope's rude masterpiece was The Dunciad.
0:23:56 > 0:23:58From the very first lines,
0:23:58 > 0:24:02Pope takes aim at the first two King Georges of the Georgian age,
0:24:02 > 0:24:06two of the many Dunces to be savaged in this huge mock epic.
0:24:08 > 0:24:13"You by whose care in vain decried and cursed
0:24:13 > 0:24:18"still Dunce the second reigns like Dunce the first."
0:24:23 > 0:24:27But the rudeness in The Dunciad has a more earthy quality,
0:24:27 > 0:24:30a humour revealed in prints of the time
0:24:30 > 0:24:34that delighted in the barefaced evacuations of daily life.
0:24:40 > 0:24:43With filth and worse filling the streets
0:24:43 > 0:24:45and a lack of any real sanitation,
0:24:45 > 0:24:49it was natural that rude scatology should be part of the poetic urge.
0:24:52 > 0:24:54In Book two of The Dunciad,
0:24:54 > 0:24:59two characters get all blokey in a peeing competition.
0:25:00 > 0:25:04"First Osborne leant against his lettered post
0:25:04 > 0:25:08"It rose and laboured to a curve at most
0:25:08 > 0:25:12"So Jove's bright bow displays its watery round
0:25:12 > 0:25:15"Sure sign that no spectator shall be drowned
0:25:15 > 0:25:19"A second effort brought but new disgrace
0:25:19 > 0:25:22"The wild meander washed the artist's face
0:25:22 > 0:25:27"Thus the small jett which hasty hands unlock
0:25:27 > 0:25:31"Spurts in the gardener's eyes who turns the cock."
0:25:37 > 0:25:43Sex and unpleasant smells were at the heart of a celebrated rude feud
0:25:43 > 0:25:46in the high society of the 1730's.
0:25:46 > 0:25:51In one corner was the Dean of St Pauls, the satirist Jonathan Swift.
0:25:51 > 0:25:55In the other was Lady Mary Wortley Montagu,
0:25:55 > 0:25:59a celebrated wit and beauty with a sharp tongue of her own.
0:25:59 > 0:26:03Swift began a bad tempered exchange of words with a poem
0:26:03 > 0:26:07in which the character Strephon spies on Celia
0:26:07 > 0:26:10and the contents of her dressing room.
0:26:10 > 0:26:14He finds there all the equipment she uses to make herself beautiful.
0:26:14 > 0:26:20The vials of puppy piss that she uses and make-up and false bits
0:26:20 > 0:26:24and he's horrified at what he finds.
0:26:25 > 0:26:28"Hard by a filthy Bason stands
0:26:28 > 0:26:31"Fowl'd with the Scouring of her Hands
0:26:31 > 0:26:36"The Bason takes whatever comes The scrapings of her Teeth and Gums
0:26:36 > 0:26:40"A nasty compound of all Hues
0:26:40 > 0:26:44"For here she spits and here she spues."
0:26:44 > 0:26:46What Swift's doing in this poem is guiding us
0:26:46 > 0:26:49on a very intimate tour of Celia's body,
0:26:49 > 0:26:53the way in which it presses into her make-up, her clothes,
0:26:53 > 0:26:57the armpits of her dress which are covered in muck,
0:26:57 > 0:27:01her stockings which are stinking of her and are stained by her feet.
0:27:01 > 0:27:04It's looking at all the traces her body leaves on these
0:27:04 > 0:27:07objects in the dressing room. In a way, almost voyeuristic.
0:27:07 > 0:27:12We are getting very close to her body without ever seeing her body,
0:27:12 > 0:27:15so there is almost a voyeuristic relish in these descriptions.
0:27:17 > 0:27:20"But, oh! it turn'd poor Strephon's Bowels
0:27:20 > 0:27:23"When he beheld and smelt the Towels
0:27:23 > 0:27:25"Begumm'd, bematt'd and beslim'd
0:27:25 > 0:27:29"With dirt and sweat and ear-wax grim'd
0:27:29 > 0:27:34"No object Strephon's eye escapes Here petticoats in frowzy Heaps
0:27:34 > 0:27:37"Nor be the handkerchiefs forgot
0:27:37 > 0:27:40"All varnished o'er with snuff and snot
0:27:40 > 0:27:45"Thus finishing his grand survey disgusted Strephon stole away
0:27:45 > 0:27:51"Repeating in his amorous fits 'Oh, Celia, Celia, Celia shits.'"
0:27:53 > 0:27:58Now was Dean Swift here dishing out a rude that was offensive to women,
0:27:58 > 0:28:02or was his verse a satire on female beauty and vanity?
0:28:02 > 0:28:03Whatever the truth,
0:28:03 > 0:28:07when Lady Montagu read his poem she was not best pleased.
0:28:07 > 0:28:10She penned her own rude response locating the source of Swift's
0:28:10 > 0:28:15disgust to failures of his own in ladies' dressing rooms.
0:28:15 > 0:28:18"What if your verses have not sold?
0:28:18 > 0:28:21"Must I therefore return your gold?
0:28:21 > 0:28:26"Perhaps you have no better lacking The knack of rhyming than of fucking.
0:28:26 > 0:28:33"I won't give back one single crown to wash your band or turn your gown.
0:28:33 > 0:28:38"I'll be revenged, you saucy Queen, replies the discontented Dean.
0:28:38 > 0:28:41"I'll so describe your dressing room.
0:28:41 > 0:28:43"She answered short
0:28:43 > 0:28:45"I'm glad you'll write
0:28:45 > 0:28:48"You'll furnish paper when I shite."
0:28:52 > 0:28:56Rude was not only important to 18th century poetry,
0:28:56 > 0:29:00it was also to be found in the novel, the newest literary form
0:29:00 > 0:29:03to entertain the Georgian reading public.
0:29:03 > 0:29:08Bawdy humour was at the heart of the success of Tristram Shandy.
0:29:08 > 0:29:13First published in 1760 and written by Lawrence Sterne,
0:29:13 > 0:29:17hitherto an obscure parson from Yorkshire.
0:29:17 > 0:29:20Tristram Shandy was probably the most successful book
0:29:20 > 0:29:22published in the whole of the century.
0:29:22 > 0:29:26Dan Brown has nothing on Laurence Sterne
0:29:26 > 0:29:30in terms of literary impact.
0:29:30 > 0:29:31It was a revelation to everyone.
0:29:31 > 0:29:34It was a new form of writing, a new form of satire
0:29:34 > 0:29:38that took elements of rudeness, elements of rude culture,
0:29:38 > 0:29:40and reinvented them.
0:29:42 > 0:29:46Tristram Shandy attracted the attention of William Hogarth
0:29:46 > 0:29:49who drew illustrations for its first editions.
0:29:49 > 0:29:53Two hundred and fifty years later, cartoonist Martin Rowson
0:29:53 > 0:29:59has produced his own graphic-novel take on this rude classic.
0:29:59 > 0:30:02I think Tristram Shandy is a wonderful novel,
0:30:02 > 0:30:04mostly because it's not a novel.
0:30:04 > 0:30:07It's an anti-novel, it's digressive, funny,
0:30:07 > 0:30:09a shaggy-dog story and it's filthy.
0:30:09 > 0:30:12It is like listening to a stand-up comedian
0:30:12 > 0:30:15for page after page after page after page.
0:30:15 > 0:30:21Rowson includes all the best rude bits in Tristram Shandy.
0:30:21 > 0:30:25Tristram's accidental circumcision with a faulty window.
0:30:28 > 0:30:31The nasty incident of the hot chestnut down the breeches.
0:30:33 > 0:30:36Uncle Toby's wound in the groin at the Battle of Namur.
0:30:40 > 0:30:44And the climax - or perhaps, in true Shandean style, anti-climax -
0:30:44 > 0:30:48the wooing by the Widow Wadman of Uncle Toby.
0:30:50 > 0:30:52Visually, the thing about the widow
0:30:52 > 0:30:54is that we don't know what she looks like
0:30:54 > 0:30:58from Sterne's description because the readers are invited
0:30:58 > 0:31:00to draw their image of beauty on a blank page.
0:31:03 > 0:31:07Toby is this sort of sweet,
0:31:07 > 0:31:09benign, ingenue.
0:31:09 > 0:31:11He's a bit like Bambi, actually.
0:31:15 > 0:31:18One of the great scenes in the novel
0:31:18 > 0:31:22is where he offers to show Widow Wadman his wound.
0:31:22 > 0:31:25He's been wounded in the groin at the siege of Namur.
0:31:25 > 0:31:30Of course, she wants to know if he is still capable of the business
0:31:30 > 0:31:35that a husband is expected to perform if she's going to marry him.
0:31:35 > 0:31:37How bad is this wound?
0:31:39 > 0:31:43"You shall see the very place, madam," said my Uncle Toby.
0:31:43 > 0:31:48Mrs Wadman blushed and looked towards the door, turned pale,
0:31:48 > 0:31:53blushed slightly again, recovered her natural colour, blushed worse
0:31:53 > 0:31:58than ever, which for the sake of the un-learned reader, I translate thus:
0:31:58 > 0:32:00"Lord, I cannot look at it.
0:32:00 > 0:32:03"What would the world say if I looked at it?
0:32:03 > 0:32:05"I should drop down if I looked at it.
0:32:05 > 0:32:07"I wish I COULD look at it.
0:32:07 > 0:32:10"There can be no sin in looking at it.
0:32:10 > 0:32:12"I WILL look at it."
0:32:26 > 0:32:30By the time Tristram Shandy became a Georgian best-seller,
0:32:30 > 0:32:33another part of rude culture was staking its claim
0:32:33 > 0:32:37to be the most vibrant part of later 18th-century life.
0:32:38 > 0:32:42This was the colourful world of satirical and humorous prints
0:32:42 > 0:32:46that could be enjoyed at print shops in London's West End,
0:32:46 > 0:32:49on Piccadilly, Oxford Street and The Strand.
0:32:49 > 0:32:55These were places of shared laughter for Londoners of all classes.
0:32:56 > 0:33:01The print shop window was probably the most colourful, changing,
0:33:01 > 0:33:05theatrical space in urban London.
0:33:05 > 0:33:08So, you would go past it every day.
0:33:08 > 0:33:09You would look for new prints.
0:33:09 > 0:33:12You would constantly expect to see something new.
0:33:12 > 0:33:14And it was incredibly democratic.
0:33:14 > 0:33:18The beggar boy and the sweep, the porter and the lord
0:33:18 > 0:33:20all walked past the print shop.
0:33:24 > 0:33:29You mustn't forget that this is a culture which is image-starved
0:33:29 > 0:33:32in a way that ours is not now.
0:33:32 > 0:33:34They're hungry for images of their own lives.
0:33:34 > 0:33:38Of course there are great paintings, but they're hidden away
0:33:38 > 0:33:43in the private houses and mansions of the great.
0:33:43 > 0:33:46If you want an image of how you live,
0:33:46 > 0:33:51or how your governors live, it's to the print shops that you have to go.
0:33:55 > 0:33:58Living above the shop of his publisher, Mrs Humphrey,
0:33:58 > 0:34:00on St James Street, Piccadilly,
0:34:00 > 0:34:05was the dark master of rude print culture, James Gillray.
0:34:07 > 0:34:11# I like my town
0:34:11 > 0:34:16# With a little drop of poison
0:34:17 > 0:34:20# Nobody knows
0:34:20 > 0:34:24# They're lining up to go and sin
0:34:24 > 0:34:27# I'm all alone... #
0:34:29 > 0:34:33I think what you get from Gillray is a kind of sour,
0:34:33 > 0:34:37disaffected, even-handed...
0:34:37 > 0:34:42misanthropy, dislike of nearly everything...
0:34:43 > 0:34:47...outside the pleasures of art itself.
0:34:47 > 0:34:49There's no love in Gillray.
0:34:49 > 0:34:52There's no warmth, there's no generosity,
0:34:52 > 0:34:54there's no joy, particularly.
0:34:54 > 0:34:57# ..And a rat
0:34:57 > 0:35:02# Always knows when he's in with weasels
0:35:04 > 0:35:08# Here you lose a little every day... #
0:35:12 > 0:35:17He also had that essential attribute of a visual satirist,
0:35:17 > 0:35:21or of any kind of satirist, which is basically a kind of fuck-you-ism.
0:35:21 > 0:35:23He attacked everybody.
0:35:27 > 0:35:30Gillray in the 1790s created his greatest works
0:35:30 > 0:35:35of malice and ridicule in fertile but dangerous times.
0:35:35 > 0:35:39This was a decade of revolution in France that created tension,
0:35:39 > 0:35:41unrest and violence in Britain.
0:35:43 > 0:35:46With fear of invasion by the French,
0:35:46 > 0:35:51Gillray used the popular medium of the print to do his patriotic duty.
0:35:51 > 0:35:55Gillray gets the third Georgian King, George III,
0:35:55 > 0:35:58to fart his contempt towards the French
0:35:58 > 0:36:01and blow their fleet back to France.
0:36:05 > 0:36:08And Gillray will visually go way over the top
0:36:08 > 0:36:11to demonise this enemy to Britain.
0:36:11 > 0:36:14"Un petit souper a la Parisienne.
0:36:14 > 0:36:16"A family of sans culottes
0:36:16 > 0:36:19"refreshing after the fatigues of the day."
0:36:19 > 0:36:21The title is wonderful.
0:36:21 > 0:36:25The image is utterly, utterly vile, utterly shocking.
0:36:25 > 0:36:27It's totally grotesque.
0:36:27 > 0:36:29It's ugly, hideous, horrible,
0:36:29 > 0:36:33but by God, it sticks in your mind, and I suppose that says
0:36:33 > 0:36:36something for his power.
0:36:37 > 0:36:42Here you have the sans culottes eating the severed head.
0:36:42 > 0:36:45That would be fine, sort of,
0:36:45 > 0:36:49but Gillray will add the gouged-out eye,
0:36:49 > 0:36:53or he will add, as he does here, the supine form
0:36:53 > 0:36:57beneath the table with the table leg rammed up in his crotch,
0:36:57 > 0:36:59but with one foot off
0:36:59 > 0:37:02and the blood spurting out.
0:37:02 > 0:37:03It's more than a nightmare.
0:37:03 > 0:37:08It's about eight nightmares in one print.
0:37:09 > 0:37:13But Gillray was just as unforgiving and ruthless
0:37:13 > 0:37:16when he turned his withering gaze on British politics.
0:37:18 > 0:37:20His work is completely about politics.
0:37:20 > 0:37:24He's utterly obsessed with politics, he's involved in it,
0:37:24 > 0:37:26he's observing it closely.
0:37:26 > 0:37:29He's one of the only people who went into Parliament and drew them.
0:37:29 > 0:37:32He had little cards he used to draw their faces on.
0:37:32 > 0:37:35That's why his images of Pitt are so accurate.
0:37:35 > 0:37:39Gillray used the simplest of images to satirise Pitt,
0:37:39 > 0:37:42Prime Minister at the time.
0:37:42 > 0:37:47It's just a simple image of a fungus in the form of Pitt' head
0:37:47 > 0:37:51coming out of a crown which is, again, rooted in a dung hill.
0:37:51 > 0:37:55And the simplicity is breathtaking.
0:37:55 > 0:37:58Pitt isn't a mushroom. Why should he be a mushroom?
0:37:58 > 0:38:01But you can actually reduce a recognisable human being,
0:38:01 > 0:38:06in this case the Prime Minister, down to something which he isn't.
0:38:06 > 0:38:09That is something that cartoonists are constantly trying to do.
0:38:09 > 0:38:12It's a kind of shape-shifting shamanism
0:38:12 > 0:38:14to turn them into something else.
0:38:14 > 0:38:18And Gillray didn't hesitate to mock the biggest target of all,
0:38:18 > 0:38:23royalty, in the portly shape of the eldest son of George III.
0:38:23 > 0:38:24George, Prince of Wales,
0:38:24 > 0:38:28was a picture of nobility when painted in official portraits.
0:38:28 > 0:38:32Gillray's caricature was something quite different.
0:38:34 > 0:38:38# ..To purge us of the seven deadly sins... #
0:38:38 > 0:38:41He skewered the heir to the throne
0:38:41 > 0:38:44with an accumulation of compromising detail.
0:38:44 > 0:38:47There is dice on the floor, he's gambling,
0:38:47 > 0:38:50there's his gambling debts written down in books.
0:38:51 > 0:38:53There's a chamber pot behind him
0:38:53 > 0:38:56over-brimming with either piss or vomit.
0:38:56 > 0:38:58There's a sort of pyramid of bottles of pills
0:38:58 > 0:39:01which he's taking to cure him of the pox.
0:39:03 > 0:39:05The table he's leaning up against
0:39:05 > 0:39:11has got these bones on the plate and a half-eaten, huge joint of meat.
0:39:11 > 0:39:15But the bones are very "ossireal", to use a nice word I've just made up,
0:39:15 > 0:39:20they're very bony. This isn't a nice feast, this isn't a nice meal.
0:39:20 > 0:39:25This is actually almost like a cannibal feast.
0:39:25 > 0:39:28It's just hammering home the point.
0:39:28 > 0:39:31Visual satire is done with a pen or an engraving tool,
0:39:31 > 0:39:34but it's actually thought up with a sledgehammer.
0:39:34 > 0:39:38Even underneath the Prince of Wales' feathers in the back,
0:39:38 > 0:39:41his coat of arms, is a knife and fork crossed over because he's just a pig.
0:39:41 > 0:39:44"He's just a greedy bastard pig and look at him!"
0:39:44 > 0:39:47BURP!
0:39:53 > 0:39:57Living close to Gillray in the West End of London, but a world apart
0:39:57 > 0:40:02in the ambition of HIS rude art, was Thomas Rowlandson.
0:40:12 > 0:40:14You wouldn't want to be on a desert island with Gillray,
0:40:14 > 0:40:16but you might want to be
0:40:16 > 0:40:20with Rowlandson, because he's a man who's deeply life-affirming
0:40:20 > 0:40:22and amused by the world.
0:40:22 > 0:40:25He never takes himself seriously.
0:40:25 > 0:40:28He has warmth, he has humour.
0:40:28 > 0:40:32He's the first humorous artist, I think, that we encounter
0:40:32 > 0:40:35in the big scheme of things in English art.
0:40:40 > 0:40:44In his prints, Rowlandson captured the confusion and chaos
0:40:44 > 0:40:49on the streets of London, just as Hogarth had done 60 years earlier.
0:40:49 > 0:40:51He's not a political animal.
0:40:51 > 0:40:55He comments on manners. He comments on the manners, increasingly,
0:40:55 > 0:40:57of ordinary people in the street.
0:40:57 > 0:41:02There's a lightness about him and a brilliant capacity to draw.
0:41:04 > 0:41:09But Rowlandson, unlike Hogarth, had no desire or need to moralise.
0:41:09 > 0:41:14He just wanted to celebrate the rude delights to be had from life.
0:41:18 > 0:41:21Rowlandson liked a drink,
0:41:21 > 0:41:26so he depicts a scene of drunken debauchery in all its rowdy excess.
0:41:29 > 0:41:31Rowlandson was a gambler,
0:41:31 > 0:41:35so he vividly captures the drama and excitement of the table.
0:41:38 > 0:41:41And Rowlandson celebrates the pleasures of the flesh,
0:41:41 > 0:41:44so in "Rural Felicity, Or Love In A Chaise",
0:41:44 > 0:41:47he brings to life the joy of al-fresco sex,
0:41:47 > 0:41:49and attached a rude ditty.
0:41:50 > 0:41:53"The kneeling youth his vigour tries
0:41:53 > 0:41:56"While o'er his back she lifts her thighs
0:41:56 > 0:41:58"The trotting horse the bliss increases
0:41:58 > 0:42:01"And all is shoving love and kisses..."
0:42:02 > 0:42:06It's not guilty, it's completely open about sex and sensuality,
0:42:06 > 0:42:08that's what I like about it.
0:42:08 > 0:42:11And they're having a good time, and the horse is having a good time too!
0:42:13 > 0:42:17I love the way the horse is kind of echoing the sensuality
0:42:17 > 0:42:19of her thighs and his arse and the rest of it.
0:42:19 > 0:42:24It's a splendid blending, I love that kind of visual punning.
0:42:24 > 0:42:26"..What couple would not take the air
0:42:26 > 0:42:29"To taste such joys beyond compare?"
0:42:32 > 0:42:36She really does look quite in control, brandishing her whip,
0:42:36 > 0:42:39and it's such a smart little chaise with its red wheels,
0:42:39 > 0:42:41that, actually, it's quite an enjoyable picture.
0:42:41 > 0:42:44Look at her feet. She just crossed her legs,
0:42:44 > 0:42:48it's what she does every day with her wonderful little shoes.
0:42:48 > 0:42:50I'm sorry, I expect I should be shocked
0:42:50 > 0:42:52but I do think it's quite fun.
0:42:55 > 0:43:00In 1811, following the final madness of George III...
0:43:01 > 0:43:06..the much-ridiculed Prince of Wales became Prince Regent.
0:43:06 > 0:43:10Now the mood of Rude Britannia darkened.
0:43:10 > 0:43:15For a decade, the dandy Regent presided over a country in crisis
0:43:15 > 0:43:18after victory in the Napoleonic Wars.
0:43:18 > 0:43:20The Regency period
0:43:20 > 0:43:23is a moment of terrific turbulence.
0:43:23 > 0:43:25There's enormous unemployment.
0:43:25 > 0:43:28Prices are very high.
0:43:28 > 0:43:32There's unrest in many provincial cities.
0:43:32 > 0:43:38There's a sense that the war has been won, but that peace is being lost.
0:43:43 > 0:43:48In London, away from the West End, further east in the city,
0:43:48 > 0:43:53radical publishers were turning rude culture into a protest movement.
0:43:53 > 0:43:58They commissioned prints that pushed a defiant agenda of political reform
0:43:58 > 0:44:03and social justice that challenged the Regent and his Ministers.
0:44:03 > 0:44:08The biggest talent these publishers worked with was George Cruikshank.
0:44:09 > 0:44:13He came from a caricaturing family, a family of printmakers.
0:44:13 > 0:44:17From a very young man, he was quite clearly in that tradition
0:44:17 > 0:44:23of extreme political rudeness, of taking no prisoners,
0:44:23 > 0:44:26of racking it up, and racking it up again.
0:44:28 > 0:44:32Despite his increased power as Regent, Cruikshank continued
0:44:32 > 0:44:35the vilification of George begun by Gillray.
0:44:35 > 0:44:39Study the detail of a Cruikshank print from 1812,
0:44:39 > 0:44:42"Merry-Making On The Regent's Birthday",
0:44:42 > 0:44:46and appreciate its satirical bite, its anger.
0:44:50 > 0:44:55On the left is Lord Hertford with two devils with French horns
0:44:55 > 0:45:00pointing above his skull, indicating his being cuckolded by his wife,
0:45:00 > 0:45:04Lady Hertford, who's dancing - with her bulbous breasts -
0:45:04 > 0:45:08with the Prince Regent in the centre of the picture.
0:45:11 > 0:45:14Lord Hertford, you notice, is reading a long scroll.
0:45:14 > 0:45:19"Two men hanged at Newgate," it says.
0:45:19 > 0:45:23The point of the joke is that here these two men are being hanged -
0:45:23 > 0:45:27and of course you can see them on the right hand of the picture -
0:45:27 > 0:45:32thanks to the Prince's indifference to their fate.
0:45:32 > 0:45:35Their fate, however, is something he is fully aware of,
0:45:35 > 0:45:40because his dancing foot rests on the petition that's for mercy,
0:45:40 > 0:45:43that has come from the wife and children,
0:45:43 > 0:45:45the two starving children,
0:45:45 > 0:45:48who you can see weeping at the foot of the scaffold
0:45:48 > 0:45:49on the right-hand side.
0:45:51 > 0:45:54So, there's a lot going on here. There's adultery.
0:45:54 > 0:45:57The man's adultery is being registered.
0:45:57 > 0:46:00The man's indifference to the plight of the poor.
0:46:00 > 0:46:05The absurdity of an aristocracy
0:46:05 > 0:46:08that can deal with adultery of this kind,
0:46:08 > 0:46:11and their own cuckolding,
0:46:11 > 0:46:17and the state of the nation, a nation in which hunger is sweeping
0:46:17 > 0:46:21the people and in which, none the less, the law has no mercy.
0:46:28 > 0:46:32The last year of the Regency, 1819, was momentous.
0:46:34 > 0:46:37Cruikshank drew instant images of outrage
0:46:37 > 0:46:40following the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester.
0:46:40 > 0:46:43Here, cavalry had charged into protesters
0:46:43 > 0:46:48agitating for parliamentary reform, killing 15 and injuring hundreds.
0:46:57 > 0:47:011819 also saw protest from an aristocrat - a radical, too -
0:47:01 > 0:47:04who supported political change,
0:47:04 > 0:47:09spoke for the oppressed, a poet with the rudest reputation
0:47:09 > 0:47:13in Regency Britain - the devilish Lord Byron.
0:47:14 > 0:47:18He's famous for his multiple affairs
0:47:18 > 0:47:21with men, women, choirboys, sisters...
0:47:21 > 0:47:24you name it, he's done it with them.
0:47:24 > 0:47:28You know, he was notorious as a libertine in his time.
0:47:30 > 0:47:35From exile in Italy, Byron had been writing a long poem, Don Juan,
0:47:35 > 0:47:40to rudely, with plain speaking, expose what he saw
0:47:40 > 0:47:43as the many lies and hypocrisies of his age.
0:47:43 > 0:47:45It's a poem written right at the end
0:47:45 > 0:47:52of Byron's career, where this former darling of the London literati
0:47:52 > 0:47:54and of London high society,
0:47:54 > 0:48:00who's had to leave London because of scandals in his own private life,
0:48:00 > 0:48:06looks back at the place he comes from and addresses its moral hypocrisy,
0:48:06 > 0:48:08its double standards,
0:48:08 > 0:48:15its prudishness, and above all - this word he used a great deal - its cant.
0:48:16 > 0:48:18His targets are poets,
0:48:18 > 0:48:23politicians, warmongers, women,
0:48:23 > 0:48:27the Church, especially the evangelical Church...
0:48:27 > 0:48:29The list is almost endless.
0:48:29 > 0:48:32It's a poem which is designed to offend almost everyone.
0:48:34 > 0:48:37Byron's use of the character Don Juan was deliberate.
0:48:37 > 0:48:40The fictional Don, like his creator,
0:48:40 > 0:48:43was a legendary rogue and philanderer.
0:48:43 > 0:48:46So to have the Don as the protagonist of his satire,
0:48:46 > 0:48:50the rude lord was provoking the moralists
0:48:50 > 0:48:52from the very first lines of the poem.
0:48:52 > 0:48:55"I want a hero: an uncommon want
0:48:55 > 0:49:00"When every year and month sends forth a new one
0:49:00 > 0:49:03"Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant
0:49:03 > 0:49:07"The age discovers he is not the true one... "
0:49:08 > 0:49:12In Don Juan, Byron does name names.
0:49:12 > 0:49:14He lambasts Wellington, the bloody militarist,
0:49:14 > 0:49:17Southey, the turncoat Tory poet laureate.
0:49:17 > 0:49:20And he doesn't flinch from the libellous and the blasphemous.
0:49:20 > 0:49:24But the tone Bryon adopted for his satire was playful.
0:49:24 > 0:49:27He knows that when people look at his writing, they're going
0:49:27 > 0:49:31to be looking for rude bits, because of his reputation as a libertine.
0:49:31 > 0:49:35In fact, what's so wonderful about the poem is the elegant,
0:49:35 > 0:49:38skilful way in which he bypasses ever being explicit.
0:49:38 > 0:49:42That he's subtle, that he's... a tease,
0:49:42 > 0:49:45and that he forces the reader to come up with the goods themselves.
0:49:45 > 0:49:48He doesn't give it to us on a plate.
0:49:48 > 0:49:51"But now I'm going to be immoral
0:49:51 > 0:49:54"Now I mean to show things really as they are
0:49:54 > 0:49:57"Not as they ought to be
0:49:57 > 0:50:01"For I avow that till we see what's what in fact
0:50:01 > 0:50:05"We're far from much improvement with that virtuous plough
0:50:05 > 0:50:08"Which skims the surface, leaving scarce a scar
0:50:08 > 0:50:12"Upon the black loam long manured by vice
0:50:12 > 0:50:16"Only to keep its corn at the old price."
0:50:18 > 0:50:22Publication of Don Juan in the fractious year of Peterloo
0:50:22 > 0:50:24was a rude bombshell.
0:50:24 > 0:50:28You have to remember that Don Juan when it was published, it was more than a book.
0:50:28 > 0:50:30It wasn't a book, it was an event.
0:50:30 > 0:50:34It was this kind of force of nature and it had everybody up in arms.
0:50:34 > 0:50:38Not to put too fine a point on it, it created a shit-storm,
0:50:38 > 0:50:40it really did, in 1819.
0:50:40 > 0:50:42The publisher of Don Juan, John Murray,
0:50:42 > 0:50:46was fearful of the scandal the poem would create.
0:50:46 > 0:50:51So not only his name, but Byron's, were missing from first editions,
0:50:51 > 0:50:53and they cost over 30 shillings,
0:50:53 > 0:50:57a month's wages for most working people.
0:50:57 > 0:51:00The point being that nobody could accuse them of trying to corrupt
0:51:00 > 0:51:03the morals of the lower classes.
0:51:03 > 0:51:06So it comes out, it hasn't really got a publisher's name on it,
0:51:06 > 0:51:10all of that's been fudged, so of course it gets pirated straightaway
0:51:10 > 0:51:15and everybody gets to have a peep at it, so it just grows and grows.
0:51:23 > 0:51:27The many pirated editions with their rude illustrations made Don Juan
0:51:27 > 0:51:32affordable and available to less well-heeled readers,
0:51:32 > 0:51:34eager to devour this notorious book.
0:51:34 > 0:51:38Much to the dismay of Byron's enemies, the poem now had
0:51:38 > 0:51:42an unheard-of readership, thought to be over 500,000.
0:52:00 > 0:52:04In 1820, the Prince Regent finally became king.
0:52:04 > 0:52:07His coronation in Westminster Abbey
0:52:07 > 0:52:10was the most lavish ever seen in London.
0:52:10 > 0:52:13Thousands of diamonds adorned his crown.
0:52:13 > 0:52:17Faced with this continued excess and the contempt it showed
0:52:17 > 0:52:23for the people, Cruikshank just carried on mocking his old enemy.
0:52:23 > 0:52:28He depicted the new George IV in drag, receiving his subjects
0:52:28 > 0:52:32whilst his latest mistress, the amply-proportioned Lady Coningham,
0:52:32 > 0:52:35wisely protected the nation's cash.
0:52:38 > 0:52:40Confronted by this ridicule,
0:52:40 > 0:52:44George decided to buy off his biggest critic.
0:52:46 > 0:52:51Cruikshank, and his brother, both get £100 in June 1820,
0:52:51 > 0:52:56and the agreement still survives, and the wording
0:52:56 > 0:53:03is not to portray His Majesty in any immoral situation whatsoever.
0:53:03 > 0:53:08Which meant that there was to be no more jokes
0:53:08 > 0:53:14at the expense of his mistresses, his flirtations, his indulgences.
0:53:14 > 0:53:17And that pretty well silenced George Cruikshank.
0:53:17 > 0:53:21Which, of course, makes one wonder about just how radical he was,
0:53:21 > 0:53:25really, that he could be so easily bought off.
0:53:25 > 0:53:27CASH REGISTER RINGS
0:53:28 > 0:53:31Meanwhile, between 1820 and 1823,
0:53:31 > 0:53:35Byron had been completing further books of Don Juan.
0:53:35 > 0:53:37But continued hostile reception to the poem
0:53:37 > 0:53:39convinced him that the game was up.
0:53:39 > 0:53:42Prudes were gaining the upper hand.
0:53:42 > 0:53:44He wrote to a friend.
0:53:44 > 0:53:47"I have written about 100 stanzas of a third canto,
0:53:47 > 0:53:49"but it is damned modest.
0:53:49 > 0:53:51"The outcry has frightened me.
0:53:51 > 0:53:53"I had such projects for the Don
0:53:53 > 0:53:57"but the cant is so much stronger than the cunt nowadays
0:53:57 > 0:54:01"that the benefit of experience in a man who had weighed the worth
0:54:01 > 0:54:05"of both syllables must be lost to despairing posterity."
0:54:08 > 0:54:13Then, in 1824, Byron died in Greece.
0:54:14 > 0:54:18His body was brought back up the Thames for a lying-in-state
0:54:18 > 0:54:22at 20 Great George Street, Westminster.
0:54:22 > 0:54:25Byron was refused burial in the Abbey across the road,
0:54:25 > 0:54:28despite this being the tradition for great writers.
0:54:32 > 0:54:37Crowds lined Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road to show respect
0:54:37 > 0:54:43for the people's poet as his funeral cortege made its way out of London.
0:54:51 > 0:54:57When Byron died he was a great hero for common people, ordinary people.
0:54:57 > 0:55:00But he was still reviled by his own, if you like,
0:55:00 > 0:55:02the aristocracy from which he came.
0:55:02 > 0:55:06So his funeral cortege passed through the streets of London,
0:55:06 > 0:55:10and London was packed with ordinary, common people who had gone to mourn
0:55:10 > 0:55:13the loss of their hero, Lord Byron.
0:55:15 > 0:55:20People at the time saw it as the end of their 1960s, or something.
0:55:20 > 0:55:22That was what it was like.
0:55:22 > 0:55:29He was a celebrity as well as a great writer, and it was almost as if
0:55:29 > 0:55:36that funeral represented to people, almost immediately, some sense that
0:55:36 > 0:55:39he was the product of a bygone age.
0:55:44 > 0:55:47By the time Byron was dead and buried,
0:55:47 > 0:55:51it was clear that Rude Britannia was now under threat.
0:55:54 > 0:55:59One satirical print from 1829, "The March Of Morality",
0:55:59 > 0:56:01reflected a taming of the rude
0:56:01 > 0:56:04that came with greater political stability
0:56:04 > 0:56:08and the influence of evangelical Christianity.
0:56:08 > 0:56:13Here, bare-breasted and red-faced do-gooders try to prevent passers-by
0:56:13 > 0:56:16enjoying the delights of the print shop window.
0:56:18 > 0:56:22Across the street is the Religious Tract Society.
0:56:22 > 0:56:26And look, that C word again - cant.
0:56:30 > 0:56:34Now, with the end of the Georgian age, the very map of London
0:56:34 > 0:56:37was changing to physically reflect
0:56:37 > 0:56:40the attempt to clean up and sanitise Rude Britannia.
0:56:42 > 0:56:46Regent Street has been put up from Piccadilly Circus to Regent's Park
0:56:46 > 0:56:49to separate the plebeian culture
0:56:49 > 0:56:51from the West End, which was aristocratic and gentry.
0:56:51 > 0:56:55It's ordered, more street order has been achieved.
0:56:55 > 0:56:59Bridges are being built, streets are being widened and so forth.
0:56:59 > 0:57:02So that by the 1830s, London has
0:57:02 > 0:57:05what is called a feeling of circulation about it.
0:57:05 > 0:57:08It's got the postures and the architectures
0:57:08 > 0:57:11and the big streets of the fine city.
0:57:18 > 0:57:22The modernised city was a bricks-and-mortar threat
0:57:22 > 0:57:25to the old rude culture.
0:57:25 > 0:57:28You get a general rebuilding of London
0:57:28 > 0:57:31into a great imperial city, certainly, but one without
0:57:31 > 0:57:35the spaces for the ballad singers, for the bawdry,
0:57:35 > 0:57:39for the print shops, for the chaos of the previous century.
0:57:51 > 0:57:57In 1837, Victoria became Queen and the Georgian era ended.
0:57:58 > 0:58:02Victorians looked back at the recent past with horror and distaste.
0:58:02 > 0:58:04Disgusting!
0:58:04 > 0:58:09They were not amused by the satirical and bawdy humour
0:58:09 > 0:58:11of their rude forebears.
0:58:11 > 0:58:14So, next time on Rude Britannia,
0:58:14 > 0:58:16could a naughty nation survive Victorian values?
0:58:16 > 0:58:19# Come into the garden...
0:58:19 > 0:58:22Oh, most certainly it could!
0:58:22 > 0:58:28# ..I'm here by the gate alone... #
0:58:28 > 0:58:30APPLAUSE AND CHEERS