Schurz and Trumbull as Richard III and Gloucester

Nast casts two Liberal Republican defectors—Senator Carl Schurz and Senator Lyman Trumbull—as Shakespeare's scheming duo from Richard III, Act III, Scene VII: Richard feigning reluctance before accepting the crown. Schurz, rendered with exaggerated hunched posture and grotesque proportions that draw on the anti-German caricature conventions of the period, plays the deformed Richard; Trumbull, in courtier's slashed doublet and plumed cap, plays the flattering Buckingham. The Capitol dome looms in the background, anchoring the theatrical costume farce to real political stakes. The Liberal Republican movement was then coalescing around Horace Greeley to unseat Grant. Nast argues the reformers are mere players performing virtue while maneuvering for power—ambition dressed as principle.