Life, 1919-02-06 · page 22 of 38
Life — February 6, 1919 — page 22: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a satirical play-within-an-article mocking New York's social elite and their indifference to culture. A theater critic repeatedly tries to invite different acquaintances to a matinée performance of *Hamlet*, but each person—an average New Yorker, a society woman, an intellectual suffragette lady, and various others—declines with increasingly absurd excuses: dress fittings, committee meetings, broker appointments, dental work, dinner schedules, and vague ennui about the play's melancholy. The satire targets the pretensions and busy superficiality of Manhattan's upper classes, who consider themselves too occupied or sophisticated to engage with serious literature. The critic's final soliloquy praises *Hamlet* as genuinely worthwhile—suggesting the joke is that nobody else recognizes or values what he values. The accompanying illustration ("The Girl He Left Behind Him") appears unrelated to the main text.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
An Off Afternoon LACE. w York, Time. The present. Dramatis Personar Tue Critic. An Averace New Yorker. A Nice You AN INTELLECT Severat Oriers. Person PrRaGE Laby. Scene I. The club at luncheon hour. Tue Critic, Howdy, old man? What are you doing this afternoon? Aw Averace New Yorker. Tue C. Nothing particular. Like to go to a matinée? Sure. What's the show? Hamlet.” ALALN.Y. H. See you in (deleted) first. Scexe Il. On Fifth Avenue, A Nice Youxc Person. Hello, dear old thing! What are you doing out in the daylight? Tue Critic. Going to a matinée. Want to go? ALN. Y. P. With you? Every time. What are we going to see? Tue C. “ Hamlet.” ALN. Y. P. Good night, nurse! Honest to gawdness, I've got to go to my dressmaker’s. Ask me again. So long. Scexe III, Further down the Avenue, Ax Intettectuat Svrrrace Lavy (portly, handsomely gowned in velvets and laces. ob: Why, Mr. C., how do you do? Out for a constitutional ? Tue Crrrtc. Quite the contrary. Would you like to go? usly corseted, but vivacious). T's an age since I've seen you. Going to a matinée, ALI. S. L. I can imagine nothing more delightful. What is the play? Tue C. “Hamlet.” AL SOL memory I have. Oh, Mr. C., you know what a shocking bad I had entirely forgotten that this afternoon there is an important meeting of our Committee for Teaching the New York Clubman How to Register. Perhaps some other day. Scene IV. Other places on the Avenue. Tue Critic. “ Hamlet.” Severat Orners. By Jove! Promised to meet my wife—— How stupid! Told my husband I'd mect him at Delmonico’s at four——Sorry, old chap, but I told my broker I'd drop in the uptown office before three about some margins ——Come to think of it, I don’t believe it would be over in time for me to catch the four-fifty-nine, and you know what a row there is if I'm late for dinner——Confound it! There goes that tooth again. I really think I'll have to go to the dentist's. ‘What? Me? “Hamlet? Not on your family portrait !- Mais non, mon ami. Le girl-et-musige, owi, mais M. Hamlet est trop triste So sorry, Au revoir. *ETFE* four une petite Francaise —Honest, bo, I thought T could, but you know I've been depressed lately. Prohibition and all that sort 0! thing, so be a good fellow an’ call it off. * Scexe V. matinécs Tue Critic (solus), Fine old play in spite of all of them; even for a modern New Yorker or New Yorkette who will con- | centrate and listen and try to think what the words mean. And as for plot, there isn’t a melodrama going that has ten per cent. of the plot of “Hamlet.” And lines and situations? Why, George M. Cohan at his best is no better than the author of “Hamlet.” The grave-digger’s gags may not be quite up | to the Forty-second-street standard, but for two or three cen- turies they have made many thousands of people laugh, and they still make them laugh. Pretty fair test, that, for humor. The production? Very simple, consisting of one set and the use of curtains, with the costumes evidently not expensive, and certainly not gorgeous. Which goes to prove that elabo- rate mountings, in s ses, rather detract from than add to the interest of a play. In the present case the result of the simplicity is to centre the attention on the lines and the acting. In the one place where the simplicity is departed from—the curiously arranged graveyard scene—the mind wanders from the action to the setting. The acting? Mr, Walter Hampden’s Hamlet shows too much effort to get away from the conventional, This has never proved successful, even when backed up with a blonde wig as a bit of Scandinavian verity lighting the tragic atmosphere of Elsinore. Mr. Hampden is not exactly flippant, even with Polonius, but the lines of the prince, whose cerebral lesion made him melancholy, do not lend themselves to the conver- sational tone, most obvious here in the speech to the players. It scems as though Mr. Hampden makes the justifiable ch of approaching the réle from the actor's and not the student's point of attack. This is likely to increase his popularity as Hamlct, dealing, as he must, with audiences and not with scholars. He is picturesque, forceful, and reads well, so his Hamilet is acceptable, if not entirely great. Mr. Bruning is a delightful Polonins, getting out of that fat part much that many miss. His delivery of the aphorisms to Laertes was almost affecting. Mr. Allen Thomas was an excellent First Grave Digg and the others of the cast not notable but suf- ficient Coming out of the Plymouth Thea © after the Cunrais Metcalfe. THE GIRL HE LEPT BEMIND MIM comicbooks.com