Description

An exponent of the theory that William Shakespeare, the modestly educated provincial man from Stratford-upon-Avon, could not have written the works – full of erudition and accurate professional jargon – which are attributed to him, Mark Twain offers an eloquent and entertaining analysis of this issue of authorship, peppered with personal recollections of his own first encounters with the Bard s plays on a boat on the Mississippi.Balancing humour, insight and vitriol, Is Shakespeare Dead? is a provocative contribution to the tradition of Shakespeare-doubting, as well as a fine example of the great American novelist s critical writing. This volume also includes Twain s racy Elizabethan pastiche, 1601, which features Shakespeare as one of its characters.