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." |
From inside the book
Results 1-3 of 21
Page 43
... knowledge the learned then possessed , and every kind of humble knowledge possessed by the lowly and the ignorant ; and added thereto a wider and more intimate knowledge of the world's great litera- tures , ancient and modern , than was ...
... knowledge the learned then possessed , and every kind of humble knowledge possessed by the lowly and the ignorant ; and added thereto a wider and more intimate knowledge of the world's great litera- tures , ancient and modern , than was ...
Page 86
... knowledge and learn- ing had therefore a special character which places it on a wholly different footing from the rest of the multifarious knowledge which is exhibited in page after page of the plays . At every turn and point at which ...
... knowledge and learn- ing had therefore a special character which places it on a wholly different footing from the rest of the multifarious knowledge which is exhibited in page after page of the plays . At every turn and point at which ...
Page 122
... knowledge of the mutual re- lations of all departments of knowledge . In a letter written when he was only thirty- one , to his uncle , Lord Burleigh , he said , “ I have taken all knowledge to be my province . " Though Bacon did not ...
... knowledge of the mutual re- lations of all departments of knowledge . In a letter written when he was only thirty- one , to his uncle , Lord Burleigh , he said , “ I have taken all knowledge to be my province . " Though Bacon did not ...
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
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