ABSTRACT
On 20 December 1790, Covent Garden presented a pantomime under the title The Picture of Paris. Written by Robert Merry and Charles Bonner, with music by William Shield, the pantomime represented the events of the French Revolution up to the Fete de la Federation of 14 July 1790. Robert Merry was possibly the best-known poet in Britain at the time, fresh from his triumphs as Della Crusca in the pages of the fashionable newspaper The World. In November 1790, Horace Walpole traced Merry's political enthusiasm to the new Birmingham warehouse of the original maker'. From the time of the Regency crisis, Merry became involved with Sheridan, the manager of newspaper opposition to Pitt after 1784. Merry himself returned to the trope late in 1794 in the first of a brilliant series of playbills mocking the Prime Minister under the name Signor Pittachio. Merry himself seems to have been relatively open to positioning himself inside rather than above the crowd.
