Life, 1893-05-11 · page 12 of 14
Life — May 11, 1893 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis for Modern Readers This *Life* magazine page reviews three theatrical productions at Palmer's Theater, critiquing their artistic merit. The text dismisses adaptations of French plays as generally not worth staging, and criticizes "Two Old Boys" for being tediously verbose and poorly acted. The two cartoon jokes below are unrelated to the drama review: 1. **"On the Half Shell"**: A satirical jab at social climbing. Parents name their baby "Obadiah T." temporarily—the "T" stands for "Temporarily"—planning to rename him after inheriting his wealthy Uncle Obadiah's money. This mocks mercenary naming practices among the poor or aspirational classes. 2. **"One Thing or the Other"**: A pub/bar joke about oysters. A customer complains about getting sick from an oyster, demanding to know if it was English. The bartender jokes that if it wasn't English, the last oyster he swallowed was the bad one—implying casual indifference to food quality or dishonest sourcing. Both cartoons use mild social satire typical of *Life*'s satirical humor.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THREE EXPERIMENTS. OWADAYS we are getting some excellent examples of what not to do in play-writing. Each of three plays produced at Palmer's last week contains a suggestion of this negative sort. The first was an adaptation from the French of Octave Feuillet under the title of “ Twilight.” — It demonstrated admirably that there are some plays, even by eminent French authors, that are not worth adapting. The third, “ Two Old Boys,” showed that it is quite pos- sible to make a rather humorous idea very depressing by attenuating it too much, and by smothering it with talk. It also showed what a handicap a poor actress can be even to a poor piece. The excellent work of Messrs. J. H. Stoddart and E. M. Holland was sadly marred by the incompetence of the Kale Mowbray of the play. It was the second play in the order of performance, how- ever, which was of greatest importance. It was Mr. Thomas Bailey Aldrich’s own dramatization of his “ Mercedes,” per- formed by a thoroughly competent cast and excellently staged. Such actors as Mr. Henley, Mr. Barrymore, Miss Arthur and “ON THE HALF SHELL.” “SO YOU HAVE NAMED THE BABY ‘OpaDIAH T.’ WHAT DOES THE ‘T’ STAND FOR?” “OH, THAT MEANS ‘ TEMPORARILY'—UNTIL HE GETS HIS UNCLE Opaptan's MONEY, YOU KNOW.” ONE THING OR THE OTHER. “Say, HAVE YOU GOT ANY ENGLISH OYSTERS AMONG THOSE YOU'RE OPENING FOR ME?" “WELL, IF THAT'S THE CASE, THE LAST ONE I SWALLOWED WAS BAD.” comicbooks.com