Life, 1928-07-05 · page 35 of 50
Life — July 5, 1928 — page 35: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a **Coca-Cola advertisement** masquerading as editorial content in *Life* magazine. The "satire" is tongue-in-cheek advertising rather than genuine political commentary. The ad takes a famous quote from Shakespeare's *Hamlet* (Act III, Scene 1)—originally describing a fashionable, observed person—and claims Shakespeare must have been unknowingly describing Coca-Cola. The joke is absurdist: a 17th-century playwright couldn't possibly have referenced a modern soft drink, yet the ad playfully pretends he did. The illustrated figure appears to be Hamlet himself, depicted holding a Coca-Cola bottle. The ad then pivots to marketing claims: 8 million drinks sold daily, soda fountains as social gathering places. This represents early-20th-century advertising strategy: leveraging high culture and humor to make products seem sophisticated and inevitable rather than merely commercial.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
What Drink Shakespeare (ebela S ays ab out [Delicious and Refreshing, | Coca-Cola “The glass of fashion and the mould of form, the observed of all observers”? ~ Maybe Mr. Shakespeare didn’t always know just what he was writing about. We can't ask him now. We can only take what he wrote for what it is, and in penning the above he must have had Coca-Cola in mind— 8 million a day—the drink that has made the soda fountain the Hamlet 8 Mii L, lio meeting place of millions. Act III, Scene 1 1/ a) d lay ‘The Coca-Cola Company, Atlanta, Ga. IT HAD TO BE GOOD TO GET WHERE I