Customer Reviews

1601 and Is Shakespeare Dead? (1882, 1909) (The Oxford Mark Twain)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is fantastic! Twain tells it from the point of view of the Cup Bearer to Queen Elizabeth I, a man who is totally disgusted to see Her Majesty sitting around speaking crudities with such personages as William Shakespeare and Sir Walter Raleigh.

The tale is hilarious, vulgar, liberally illustrated with ranuchy woodcuts that are best left unseen by children and young adolescents (for example, one of a cardinal with a raised surplice, urinating rather graphically, and several of men with, shall we say, large appendages).

Yes, this IS a fart joke. In fact, rumor has it that Twain's poker buddies were its first readers. The then Sec'y of the Army had West Point Press publish it.The transcendant skill and humor raises this to greatness, despite the subject. In fact, Twain probably took this as a huge challenge.Keep it from the youngest until they can appreciate it, but read it aloud alone together every Valentine's day.

In "Is Shakespeare Dead?" Twain entered the Shakespeare authorship debate with a bang. The work is pure Twain brilliance. Twain begins by listing the absolute known facts about Shakespeare of Stratford, which can fit nicely on one sheet of paper. He then examines the thousands of pages of Stratford Shakespeare biographies written by academics, and in his own hilariously sarcastic way mocks these "surmisers of surmised facts" explaining how they have inflated a "chipmunk's trail through Stratford" into a literary "Hercules" of renown.

Twain next speaks of "authentic authorship" by pointing out with convincing detail that unless you have walked the walk, you can't talk the talk. For example, he says Bret Harte attempted to write stories about life as a Mississipi riverboat captain or a sailor on the high seas, but that any real riverboat captain or sailor could tell in the first few lines that Harte was writing from book learning, not from actual experience as a captain or sailor. Twain nicely says that authors (no matter how brilliant) can't fake the language and tone of real experience when it comes to endeavors involving high levels of skill. You have to walk the walk to convincingly talk the talk. He then proceeds to point out one simple fact: the Shake-speare canon was written by a man who was deeply experienced in sixteenth-century law and legal procedures--as numerous legal historians of that period have attested--deeply experienced, not just a law clerk for a short period. Twain then proceeds to point out that not one shred of evidence exists that Stratford Shakespeare even served as a law clerk, let alone a deeply experienced barrister or judge.

Twain goes on in this vein in regard to the numerous aspects of Shake-speare's works that prove the author was a member of Elizabeth's court, was widely traveled, knew several languages, and was in actuality a Hercules of literary proportions, leaving us masterpiece after masterpiece, not the chipmunk who left his trail through Stratford.

Twain actually spends relatively little space talking about Francis Bacon as the author of the plays, despite what other reviewers seem to suggest, although this was Twain's belief at the time he wrote his book.

Twain, Freud, Washington Irving, William James, along with numerous others through the years have long been convinced that Shakespeare of Stratford was not the author of the plays. It has only been in the last 100 years though that a consensus has formed about who the author was. That consensus holds for Edward DeVere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford. For an excellent book, among many, that DeVere was the author, see Mark Anderson's book "Shakespeare by Another Name." This is a highly controversial subject. For a book often praised that argues for the Stratford man as the real author, see Irvin Leigh Matus's "Shakespeare in Fact." After studying both, I am with Twain: the factual evidence is overwhelmingly minimal (still that one page and a lot of surmising) for the Stratford man, while the evidence for DeVere as Shake-speare is an avalanche of fascinating and convincing historical and documentary detail. Shake-speare is still alive, in the phoenix of DeVere.

This book consists of two parts, the brief 1601 and the longer "Is Shakespeare Dead?" (ISD)

1601 is eleven pages of dense faux-Elizabethan dialog. Between Twain's misleading spelling and the remarkable typography, it takes a while to realize that you're reading the most literate piece of potty humor in the English langauge. During the discourse that discovers the donor of that "most desolating breath," Twain unleashes bawdy that would surprise any school-marm who thinks of Twain only for Puddinhead Wilson and that cohort.

By far the longer piece, ISD starts out as a Shakespeare vs. Bacon argument. Twain largely cites other sources in the debate over who really wrote the works attributed to Wm. S; in the end, he comes down on the side of the brontosaur (go read it yourself to see what that means). His native wit comes through in the end of the piece. From any other writer, it would have been an ad hominem attack against the side Twain opposes - both of them, really. In his case, however, it's merely an observation on human traits of mind that tend to muddle both the facts and the use of them.

1601 is brilliant, if ISD drags a bit. They're both worth reading, though I wouldn't recommend either as an introduction to Twain.

//wiredweird

1601 recounts a naughty fireside chat between Shakespeare and other noteworthy english figures. Twain writes the entire text in a basterdized version of middle english spelled phoneticly. It is quite funny but difficult to read and rather course. In the second half of the book Twain argues that Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays. It is a prime example of Twain`s wit and one long gentlemanly slight against Shakespeare.

There are two unrelated pieces by Mark Twain in this volume, both of them fallen into (or perhaps, never rose from) obscurity, and deservedly so. "1601" is an lewd & raunchy imaginary conversation at the court of Elizabeth I. The narrator is disgusted by what he has heard -- the author partly shares the disgust and partly is fascinated with the fact that raunchy talk was not always taboo. This story has value as a look into Victorian sensibilities and into Twain's personality, but I did not enjoy reading it. I found it tedious, like Chaucer's Miller's Tale.

"Is Shakespeare Dead?" is a wonderful but misleading title. Actually this piece is about the old controversy of whether Shakespeare wrote the works attributed to him, with Twain jousting for the Baconian cause. He admits at the outset that he originally developed his Baconian prejudice merely for the sake of argument with an ardent Avonian. This work adds nothing useful to the Baconian position, and would be of interest only to the most ardent collectors of Twainiana.