Life, 1913-10-09 · page 18 of 44
Life — October 9, 1913 — page 18: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This piece satirizes **ticket scalping in early 20th-century New York theater**, structured as a parody of Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy. The author (Joseph Van Raalte) mocks theatergoers' willingness to overpay **speculators** (scalpers) operating outside box offices rather than buying directly. The satire identifies the absurd logic: patrons pay inflated prices to avoid poor seats from the official box office, yet they could simply buy at the window and accept whatever seating results. The dark illustration shows a couple meeting with a speculator in a tree-lined passage—depicting the covert, almost illicit nature of scalping transactions. Van Raalte's critique isn't primarily against scalpers, but against the **theater management** (whose "contracted" estimates of patron intelligence and poor seat allocation enable the problem) and against wealthy New Yorkers' habit-driven complicity—they have "too much money to spend" and slavishly imitate the wealthy's behavior, becoming asses in the process.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE SWEETEST FLOWER THAT GROWS The Theatregoer’s Soliloquy ‘O pay or not to pay; that is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler in a man to give a speculator Three and a half or four dollars for the privilege of incurring mental indigestion By partaking of a dramatic peach, plucked before it is ripe— Or, to walk unostentatiously up to the box-office Pay the regulation price and, going in, learn anew How contracted is the managerial estimate of his patrons’ mentality ? To disregard the speculator—to pass him by with a frigid frown As if he were a creditor—to ignore him; No more id by so doing, to say we end The pernicious custom New Yorkers so tenaciously adhere to,—'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To patronize the box-office ; To get seats; perhaps to get bad seats; ay, there’s the rub! For from that box-office what seats may come When we have shoved in our hard-earned coin, Must give us pause: there’s the consideration That makes the speculator a virtue; For who would bear the seat behind the post The position hard aport, or hard astarboard— The plush-covered relic of the Inquisition Astern of the matinee maiden with the picture hat— The waste of money—the shattered temper When he, himself, can avoid it all By purchasing tickets on the sidewalk? Who would thus use himself or his fair companion When it might all be so easily altered By patronizing the manager's relation out in front? Thus the speculator doth make asses of us all And_ thus the power of habit is fastened on us By our having too much money to spend; and our greatest Enterprise and ambition is smilingly to emulate the parvenu. Joseph Van Raalte. comicbooks.com