Is Shakespeare Dead?
Is Shakespeare Dead? ( Is Shakespeare Dead? ) Subtitle: From My Autobiography, is a short, semi - autobiographical, and the last book by Mark Twain. It examines the authorship debate of the literary work of William Shakespeare by satire, anecdote and extensive citation of contemporary authors. The original publication included almost 150 pages and was published about a year before the death of Mark Twain.
Summary
In the book, Twain comes to the conclusion that William Shakespeare of Stratford could not have been the author of the works of the canon. For much of his knowledge, he moved at that time from the book George Green Woods, which he cited inadequate. Twain's book expresses the conviction of how quickly scientists develop the naive faith in assurances of authors, and supports the assumption of the theory of Francis Bacon. The book begins with a scene of his early childhood, when he was trained by an elder for steamboat pilot, with whom he often discussed about this controversy.
Twain's arguments are based inter alia on the following points:
- There was little information and resources about Shakespeare's life, so that the large number of biographies based only on conjecture and assumptions.
- There is an outstanding number of English lawyers and judges, the very precise "legal " or " legal " have noticed events in Shakespeare's plays, which could only have come from an author who has had extensive professional and legal knowledge.
- This was in contrast to William Shakespeare, for never a "legal" position or a " legal " Office have become known, and who was involved only in his late life in petty lawsuits.
- The fact that small towns usually idolized famous inhabitants of their city over many generations and celebrated and this was not the case for Shakespeare. He described his own glory in Hannibal as such a typical case.
Twain drew parallels and analogies to the claim and the pretensions of modern religious personalities and exegetes of the nature of the devil. He compared the faithful of Stratford- man with followers of spare prophets like Mary Baker Eddy taught and violent attacks against their collective character, by they did the same thing in their condemnation of the Baconians. During this hypocrisy was probably not serious, 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
- Marilyn Davis DeEulis, Mark Twain 's Experiments in Autobiography, American Literature, 1981