The author, David Hillman, developed an analogy to Shakespeare’s dramatic works as Rorschach ink blots. His works have pervaded through the ages due to a complexity that allows multifaceted interpretation while maintaining general themes relatable to all of humanity. The penetrating stories contained therein display the human condition in a fashion that is limited only to the interpreting audience, and this goes beyond mere literary tradition. Because of its powerful resonance with humanity as a whole, his works have permeated a variety of mediums since their conception, and Canada’s reception to Shakespeare’s legacy is uniquely tied to its political infancy. A certain figure by the name of John Wilson Bengough, one of our nation’s earliest political cartoonists, witnessed, in the ink blotted verses of the great bard, the presence of Canada’s own political story in action. Before photographs were ever used in newspapers or articles, Bengough created a magazine called 'Grip', which ran from 1873-1894. Through this outlet, he published a series of political caricatures referencing Shakespearean icons that tell a story of Canada’s early days in a way that no journal text could. Bengough’s caricatures selectively allowed Shakespeare's mythos to speak for the human element involved Canada's own tumbling political struggle to rise to its own two feet as an independent nation. The result is a frank and honest portrayal of its key political figures and events, including its blunders scandals and fears.

Canada's history is ripe with corruption, political follies, social and economic inequalities, and injustices to its weaker citizens. These themes, expressed through the medium of caricaturing, with its dramatic principles of exaggerating its subjects, allowed Bengough to organically involve Shakespearean references, which Canadians were then able to more easily understand. Bengough’s works, with Shakespearean references, were so effective in conveying their meaning that they remain understandable to contemporary viewers today.

John A Macdonald was Bengough’s favourite political subject. He once claimed that Canada’s first prime minister was his ‘stock and trade’. The man was a drunkard, and corrupt, but he has created his own legacy as the man that stretched Canada from the East to the West. Nonetheless, Bengough was against the man, and here we have his caricature anticipating parliament’s 1879 opening with Macdonald pictured as a cast of Shakespearean villains. Schagerl's thesis, titled 'A Shakespearean View of It': Shakespeare in Canada, 1848-1891, argued that Macdonald is being represented as the indecisive Hamlet and Macbeth, the conscienceless Richard, and the corrupt Wolsey and Iago, and this suggests Bengough anticipated his term to be destined for a tragic downfall akin to the Shakespearean characters (110).