The Wedding Night [satirical print].

Beschrijving

Two young Quakers sit primly side by side in bed. The woman (left) holds her thumbs and fingers wide apart, the hands almost touching at the finger-tips. The man’s thumbs are in the same position, but the fingers are interlaced. They sit squarely, their heads slightly turned, looking sideways at each other. He asks: “Beloved Ruth—shall We go to sleep—or how?” She answers: “Why Obidiah if the Spirit moveth us we will how first—and go to sleep afterwards.” The treatment is decorative, the heads slightly caricatured, the necks thin and elongated. A white tufted coverlet forms the base of the design, which is framed by curtains. Further inscription on the bottom: ‘Among words which signify the same pr… ideas / some are clean & decent, others unclean some chaste / other obscene’; ‘Talk not to a Lady in a way that modesty will not permit her to answer’, the latter sentence from Samuel Richardson’s ‘Clarissa’.