A dark political and psychological satire on the state of the governance of the country, fittingly presented as a parody of Henry Fuseli’s powerful depiction of the three witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which is acknowledged in the dedication across the top of the image, ‘To H. Fuzelli Esq.r this attempt in the Caricatura-Sublime, is respectfully dedicated’. The left half of the composition comprises a group of three portrait busts, in profile, of Henry Dundas (1st Viscount Melville), William Pitt the Younger, and Edward Thurlow (1st Baron Thurlow). Their heads are draped in shrouds and surrounded by clouds, each with their fingers resting very pensively on their noticeably unshaven chins, as they gaze intently towards the right half, at the bright crescent of the moon formed by the face of Queen Charlotte smiling back at them, while the larger dark side forms the head of King George III, turned away from them in deep shadow with eyes closed. Rather than predicting the future, as in the play, they here ponder the uncertainty of the times, coming at the start of the Regency Crisis of George’s madness, and political unease at the lack of trust between Thurlow and Pitt, and provisional appointment of Dundas as Home Secretary, awaiting the rejection of that role by Cornwallis. Below the title is inscribed ‘They should be women! - and yet their beards forbid us to interpret, - that they are so’.