[Masquerades and operas ("The bad taste of the town")] [graphic].[not before 1724]engCopy of William Hogarth's satire on the "bad taste of the town", with different verses engraved below. The image is of a composite street scene with a theatre on either side and an "Academy of Arts" (Lord Burlington's recently remodelled house in Piccadilly) beyond; on the left, a fool and a devil are leading a crowd of masqueraders into the Opera House in the Haymarket from which hang a banner advertising an opera (based on British Museum satire no. 1768 with the singers Cuzzoni, Senesino and Berenstadt) and a sign for "Dr. Faux's [Isaac Fawkes] Dexterity of Hand", the impressario John James Heidegger leans from an upper window; on the right, a crowd is flocking to see the pantomime "Dr Faustus"; in the centre, a woman pushes a wheelbarrow of waste paper including volumes of Congreve, Dryden, Ottway, Shakespeare, Addison, and Ben John[son]; the gate of the Academy beyond is topped with statues of Michelangelo, Raphael and William Kent, admired by three gentlemen."--British Museum online catalogueTitles, state, publisher, and date from Paulson.Text and image on one plate.Two columns of four lines of verse engraved below image: Long has the stage productive been, Of offsprings it could brag on, But never 'till this age was seen, A wind-mill and a dragon. O Congreve, lay they pen aside, Shakespear, thy works disown, Since monsters grim, * nought beside. Can please this senseless town.Sheet trimmed to plate mark.Cf. No. 1742 in Catalogue of prints and drawings in the British Museum. Division I, political and personal satires, v. 2.Copy of Hogarth print. See Paulson, R. Hogarth's graphic works (3rd ed.), no. 44.