Life, 1892-03-10 · page 12 of 14
Life — March 10, 1892 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Life Magazine Page 154: Satire on Playwriting and Marriage This page contains three distinct pieces of satirical humor: **"A Perplexing Question"** (top left): A poem questioning whether a woman's romantic indulgence represented prudent behavior or excess, framed around classical references to Roman lovers and pearls—likely satirizing Victorian anxieties about female morality and romance. **"Playwriting" (main text)**: A mock instructional guide sarcastically advising aspiring playwrights on how to succeed. The "8-step" process ridicules theatrical plagiarism and shortcuts: steal European plays, hire newspaper writers to rewrite scenes, add variety acts, insert *Life* magazine jokes, hire actors and stagehands—essentially prescribing wholesale theft and assembly-line mediocrity. It's satirizing both the proliferation of derivative Broadway plays and the commercial theater industry's cynical practices. **The cartoons** include a "Grand Concert" ad for children at half price (mocking cheap entertainment), and a domestic exchange about buying a "little sister" cheap, plus a final joke about a minister making "both ends meet"—likely financial wordplay about clerical poverty. The page satirizes early 20th-century theatrical commercialism, marriage skepticism, and consumer culture.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
A PERPLEXING QUESTION, that rich draught which F Quaffed smilingly we often hear, Yet there's a doubt within my mind Which nothing that is writ makes clear. Perhaps one gleam of prudence lurked "Neath mad excess in pleasure’s whirl— was homage to a Roman lover, Was it a Roman pearl? Besste Alice Hanscom. PLAYWRITING. A great many people wish to write a successful play. There is no reason in the world why they should not, and yet for a prize re- cently offered by a morning paper, over a thousand plays were sub- Me: She: NO WOMAN KNOWS WHAT REAL. HAPPINESS IS UNTIL SHE 1S MARRIED. YES, WHEN SHE FINDS SHE HAS JUST LOST IT FOREVER. mitted in competition, and of course but one could be successful. Merely observe the following simple directions and you will be a great playwright before any of us can get an introduction to a variety actor or actress : ist. Draw sufficient money out of the bank and proceed to Europe. After you have overcome the SAY, MAMMA, YOU KNOW YOU SAID You'D BUY MEA LITTLE ER WIEN THEY GOT CHEAP. “Dip I, DEAR; WELL 2?” “WELL, HERE'S YOUR CIIANCE TO GET ONE MALF PRICE.” FoR effects of the voyage and have become accustomed to the foreign slang, glance hurriedly. over the latest successful plays in London, Berlin and P. Purchase two or three of the best and have a good time. Cable to the New York papers a few unimportant despatches about yourself and the state of your healih when you saw it last. and. Return to New York and hire a couple of newspaper men who are temporarily out of a job to rewrite the play for you, mixing up the scenes, incidents and acts as much as possible, and putting in as many jokes from Lire as you can remember, read or buy. 3rd. Hire avariety actor to write in some variety lines. (The news- paper men will correct his grammar and spelling as he goes along). 4th. Get a yood stage carpenter (not morally good, necessarily, just good) to work in a mechanical effect or defect, as you may choose to call it, 5th. song and dance is. if she is not too shy. 6th. Put your name to the play as its author. 7th. Go tc any manager in New York and be will fall on your neck with unaffe sd joy. Your fame and fortune are now made, but— 8th. Don't ‘get to have the newspaper men write out your speech for the op. of the gallery. It aay seem like money thrown away, but they know where the applause ould come in and they may be able to start it. Tom Hall, L OLLY: Oh, mamma, | met a little girl to-day who had never heard of a cow. DOLLy’s MOTHER: little girl, Dolly ? Dotty: She s Get acquainted with a soubrette and find out what her best Work that in. Get well acquainted with her ing night and give them a seat apiece in the back That was strange, wasn't it? Who was the id her father was a milkman ‘THE MINISTER'S stTUuDY—How to make both ends meet. comicbooks.com