Judge — October 10, 1914 — page 14: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This cartoon contrasts medieval and modern romance. The image shows a poet outside a woman's window at night—a scene evoking the traditional troubadour serenading his love beneath her casement. The satire's point: medieval troubadours used music to court women safely. Modern poets, by contrast, use fountain pens to write—presumably love letters or poems—which can become legal evidence in breach-of-promise lawsuits (a real legal issue of the era when jilted women could sue for damages). The caption's punchline—"Those Troubadours were not such fools"—mocks modern men for creating written documentation of romantic promises they might later break, exposing themselves to litigation. The cartoon criticizes how modern courtship, despite seeming more sophisticated, actually makes men more vulnerable legally.