Is Shakespeare dead?

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Book cover of the US first edition of the last book by Mark Twain from 1909

Is Shakespeare Dead? (Is Shakespeare Dead?), Subtitle: From My Autobiography , is a short, semi-autobiographical and the final book by Mark Twain . It examines the authorship debate of the literary work of William Shakespeare through satire, anecdote and extensive citations from contemporary authors. The original publication was just under 150 pages and was published about a year before Mark Twain's death.

Summary

In the book, Twain comes to the conclusion that William Shakespeare from Stratford could not have been the author of the canon of works. At that time he drew much of his knowledge from George Greenwood's book , which he cited inadequately. Twain's book expresses a belief in how quickly scientists develop naive belief in author's assurances and supports the conjecture of the theory about Francis Bacon . The book begins with a scene in his early childhood when he was trained to be a steamboat pilot by an elderly man with whom he often discussed this controversy.

Twain's arguments are based on the following points, among others:

  • There is little information and sources about Shakespeare's life, so that the large number of biographies are based only on conjectures and assumptions.
  • There are an outstanding number of English lawyers and judges who have noted in Shakespeare's plays very precise "legal" or "legal" incidents that could only come from an author who had professional and extensive legal knowledge. This is in contrast to William Shakespeare, for whom a “legal” position or “legal” office was never known and who was only involved in petty legal proceedings in his later life.
  • That small places usually idolized and celebrated famous citizens of their city for many generations and that this was not the case for Shakespeare. He described his own fame in Hannibal as such a case in point.

Twain drew parallels and analogies to the claims and presumptions of modern religious personalities and exegetes of the nature of the devil. He compared the Stratford man's believers to followers of surrogate prophets like Mary Baker Eddy and directed violent attacks on their collective character by doing the same in their condemnation of the Baconians . Even if this polemic was probably not meant seriously, the tone was not dispassionate.

swell

  • Michael D. Bristol, "Sir George Greenwood's Marginalia in the Folger Copy of Mark Twain's Is Shakespeare Dead?" Shakespeare Quarterly 1998
  • Mark Twain, Is Shakespeare Dead? Kessinger Publishing, 2004, ISBN 1419226797
  • Mark Twain, is Shakespeare dead? From my autobiography. German translation by Hanno Wember. Stratosverlag, Hamburg, 2015. ISBN 978-3-943731-15-6 (= Spectrum Shake-Speare Volume 4 - 2015, German first publication, with an article by James Norwood: "Mark Twain and 'Shake-Speare: Seelenverwandte")
  • Marilyn Davis DeEulis, "Mark Twain's Experiments in Autobiography," American Literature , 1981

Bibliography and Notes

  1. ↑ There are various reprints in 2004 of the original 1909
  2. ↑ April 1909, Harper & Brothers
  3. ↑ George Greenwood, The Shakespeare Problem restated
  4. ↑ Mark Twain, All We Know About William Shakespeare, Twain in: Archived Copy ( Memento of March 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive )

Web links