Judge — July 24, 1920 — page 27: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This page satirizes Shakespeare's plays as if they were silent films or movie comedies. The cartoonist (C.W. Kahles) illustrates famous scenes from *Merchant of Venice*, *The Tempest*, *King Henry VIII*, *Hamlet*, *My Kingdom for a Flower* (likely *Richard III*), *Merry Wives of Windsor*, *King Richard III*, *Comedy of Errors*, *Julius Caesar*, *Romeo and Juliet*, and *Twelfth Night*. The satire mocks how Hollywood adapted or reimagined classical literature—reducing profound tragedies to slapstick "scream" comedies with exaggerated physical humor and pratfalls. The juxtaposition of dignified source material with crude, vaudeville-style gags pokes fun at both theatrical adaptation and cinema's commercial prioritization of cheap laughs over artistic merit.