Mr. Williams | The conjurer from Barbados

Mr. Williams

This is to acquaint the Nobility, Gentry, and Others, That the Famous Mr. Williams (From the Island of Barbadoes, in the West-Indies) Will exhibit, this present Evening, His whole Art of Dexterity of Hand. [London:ca. 1750]

Broadside playbill (211 x 155 mm). Woodcut vignette showing Williams throwing cards with an array of exotic birds; not examined out of frame, faint folds. Matted, framed, and glazed with Plexiglas. 

This playbill describes the repertoire of an elusive conjurer known only as Williams: He has arrived in England from Barbados and implies that he is a native of the West Indies, certainly an interesting pedigree for an itinerant performer of that era. Williams serves as a transitional figure between the acclaimed magicians of the mid-eighteenth century, Fawkes and Buchinger, and the fairground conjurers who were popular fifty years later, Lane and Palatine, among others (EE).  

Not recorded in ESTC 

REFERENCE:

EE, pp. 32-33