1601: And, Is Shakespeare Dead?, Volume 271601, or Conversation, as it was by the Social Fireside, in the time of the Tudors is a hilarious ribald send-up of Elizabethan England in which Queen Elizabeth, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Sir Walter Raleigh, and other luminaries of the period are pictured sitting about the fireplace amusing one another with risqué tales. During a visit to West Point in 1881, Twain met Lieutenant Charles Erskine Scott Wood, adjutant to the commanding general. As Leslie Fiedler notes in his afterword, "he discovered not only that Wood, like him, was a freethinker, but that he had at his disposal a well-equipped printing plant." He asked Wood to publish the piece, and it is the West Point edition--complete with the Old English-style type Wood selected--that is printed here. If "in 1601 Twain both parodied and paid homage to Shakespeare's liberating bawdry," Erica Jong observes in her introduction, in "Is Shakespeare Dead? he tried to come to terms with his conflicting responses to Shakespeare as mentor and muse." Jong suggests that Twain's real concern in this book may well be his own "place in literary history." |
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Page 37
... evidence in existence that he ever went to school at all . The historians " infer " that he got his Latin in that school - the school which they " suppose " he attended . They " suppose " his father's declining fortunes made it ...
... evidence in existence that he ever went to school at all . The historians " infer " that he got his Latin in that school - the school which they " suppose " he attended . They " suppose " his father's declining fortunes made it ...
Page 45
... evidence that he ever did either of those things . They are merely a couple of chunks of plaster of paris . There is a legend that he got his bread and butter by holding horses in front of the London theatres , mornings and after- noons ...
... evidence that he ever did either of those things . They are merely a couple of chunks of plaster of paris . There is a legend that he got his bread and butter by holding horses in front of the London theatres , mornings and after- noons ...
Page 48
... evidence . In- ternal evidence . Shall I set down the rest of the Con- jectures 48 IS DEAD ? SHAKESPEARE.
... evidence . In- ternal evidence . Shall I set down the rest of the Con- jectures 48 IS DEAD ? SHAKESPEARE.
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admiration Adventures of Huckleberry Afterword American edition artist attorney's office autobiography Baconian beeing Bobbie Ann Mason celebrated claim Claimants Clemens Connecticut Yankee copy court culture death dream Ealer Erica Jong essay fact fart fiction Francis Bacon freedom grace Hannibal happened hath Huck Huckleberry Finn Illustrated Introduction irreverence knowledge Lady lawyer learned literary literature lived Lord Penzance Mark Twain House Mark Twain Project matter mind Mississippi never novel obscene Oxford Mark Twain person Plays and Poems poet poetry pornography published Pudd'nhead Wilson readers Roy Blount Jr sacred Satan scatology scholars seems Shake Shakespeare Dead Shakespeare of Stratford Shaxpur Shelley Fisher Fishkin speare's story Strat Stratford Stratford Shakespeare Stratfordians surmise talk tell things tion Tom Sawyer Abroad trade village voice William Shakespeare word write wrote Ye Queene yeeres young