Prince and the Pauper (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (32 page)

Mark Twain’s wife, Livy Clemens, wrote the first dramatic adaptation of The Prince and the Pauper. The family performed it at the Clemens home in Hartford, Connecticut, with Twain playing the role of Miles Hendon, the down-on-his-luck nobleman who befriends Prince Edward. The official theatrical version of the novel, adapted by Abby Sage Richardson, premiered in Philadelphia on Christmas Eve, 1889, and moved the following month to the BroadwayTheater in New York. The dual role of Tom Canty and Prince Edward was played by a young, diminutive actress, Elsie Leslie, of whom Twain was very fond. Twain’s popularity brought people to the play, but the production was only a moderate critical success. One problem cited was that of the dual role; while the trick appealed greatly to audiences, scenes from the book featuring Canty and the Prince together were omitted or altered for the stage production, and critics felt this detracted from the play’s dramatic effect.

Soon after it appeared, the play became mired in controversy when journalist Edward House filed a lawsuit against Twain, claiming the novelist had asked him to adapt The Prince and the Pauper in 1886. The high-profile case drew a tremendous amount of interest from the general public. On March 9,1890, the New York Times described the proceedings:

Judge Daly ruled in favor of House, and ordered a halt on all performances of the Richardson dramatization, which by that time was on national tour. Days after the decision was handed down, Dan Frohman, the play’s manager and principal investor, reached a financial agreement with House that allowed Frohman to continue the national tour for five years. Through it all, Twain maintained his own version of history, telling the Times, “House never thought of making a play out of my book, in my opinion, until he heard that Mrs. Richardson had done it.” He eventually wrote a manuscript entitled “Concerning the Scoundrel E. H. House,” which remains unpublished.

Several theatrical versions of The Prince and the Pauper have since appeared. One, a musical, ran successfully at the off-Broadway Lamb’s Theatre in New York during the holiday seasons of 2002 and 2003. It was directed by Ray Roderick, with music and lyrics by Neil Berg, additional lyrics by Bernie Garzia, and book by Ray Roderick and Bernie Garzia.

There have been more than a dozen film versions of The Prince and the Pauper over the years, ranging from silents to made-for-television movies. The first adaptation was produced by none other than Thomas Edison. Directed by J. Searle Dawley, the two-reel The Prince and the Pauper (1909) features the only known celluloid footage of Mark Twain. Barely a minute long, the scene shows the author shambling in front of Stormfield, his house near Redding, Connecticut, smoking a pipe and sipping a drink. Several years later, Edwin Porter’s The Prince and the Pauper (1915) premiered as the first feature adaptation of a Twain novel.

Other notable adaptations include William Keighley’s The
Prince
and the Pauper (1937), starring Errol Flynn as Miles Hendon and twins Billy and Bobby Mauch as Tom Canty and Prince Edward. The film boasts terrific acting by the twelve-year-old stars, and focuses on character development and swashbuckling action in equal portions. Erich Wolfgang Korngold later adapted his wonderful score into a symphonic work. Twentieth-century American writer Gore Vidal, whose oeuvre includes several historical fictions, cites the movie as one of his earliest influences.

Richard Fleischer’s adaptation of The Prince and the Pauper (1978), titled Crossed Swords, lacks some of the vitality of its predecessor, despite its star-studded cast and high production values. Mark Lester, who starred in Oliver! ten years earlier, is a little long in the tooth to be convincing in the dual role of Tom Canty and Prince Edward. Charlton Heston plays Henry VIII with an American accent, and Ernest Borgnine does the same in his rendition of John Canty. Rounding out the cast are Raquel Welch as Edith, George C. Scott as the Ruffler, and Oliver Reed as Miles Hendon. Fleischer’s film, though flawed, boasts excellent cinematography, beautiful sets, and authentic costumes.

Disney’s animated feature The Prince and the Pauper (1990), directed by George Scribner, stars Mickey Mouse in the title roles. The wicked “Black Pete” plans to usurp the throne once the ailing King dies, an evil scheme that forces Donald Duck and Goofy to help the heroes hatch a plan to stop him. The vivid songs, exciting action, and droll comedy play off against the more dramatic elements, which culminate in an emotional scene between Prince Mickey and his dying father.

Famed documentary producer Ken Burns—noted for The
Civil
War (1990) and,
Jazz
(2000)—directed the biopic Mark Twain (2001). The three-and-a-half-hour film includes hundreds of photographs of Twain’s home, friends, and surroundings; interviews with scholars and writers; commentary by Hal Holbrook, star of the legendary one-man theatrical show Mark Twain Tonight!; and the film footage of Mark Twain himself from Edison’s The Prince and the Pauper. The film covers the major events in Twain’s life and serves up many pleasing anecdotes about his history and works.

Louis Auchincloss borrowed the title of Twain’s novel for his own rags-to-riches social commentary, “The Prince and the Pauper” (1970), a short story revolving around two lawyers. Since 1947, Auchincloss has used his experience as a trust and estate lawyer on Wall Street to write more than fifty books cleverly skewering the recherché society of moneyed New Yorkers. Auchincloss, who continued to practice law throughout his half-century-long literary career, created dazzlingly accurate satires that straddle the line between wicked and tender.

In “The Prince and the Pauper” Auchincloss traces the fortunes of two lawyers: Brooks Clarkson, a senior partner born into a socially prominent family, and the virtuous Benny Galenti, a junior attorney and son of Sicilian immigrants who aspires to achieve the American Dream. Clarkson is in the process of drinking himself to death when he takes Galenti as a protégé, perhaps wishing to redeem his own spiritually empty life. Galenti’s brilliant rise matches Clarkson’s ignominious fall, but the young lawyer’s success causes him to face the same social and occupational pressures that led to Clarkson’s collapse.

So far as Mark Twain is concerned, [The Prince and the Pauper] is an entirely new departure; so much so as to make it appear inappropriate to reckon it among that writer’s works. It is indisputably by Clemens; it does not seem to be by Twain,—certainly not by the Twain we have known for a dozen or more years as the boisterous and rollicking humorist, whose chief function has been to diffuse hilarity throughout English-reading communities and make himself synonymous with mirth in its most demonstrative forms. Humor, in quite sufficient proportion, this tale does assuredly contain; but it is a humor growing freely and spontaneously out of the situations represented,—a sympathetic element, which appeals sometimes shrewdly, sometimes sweetly, to the senses, and is never intrusive or unduly prominent; sometimes, indeed, a humor so tender and subdued as to surprise those who are under its spell with doubts whether smiles or tears shall be summoned to express the passing emotion.

—
Atlantic Monthly
(December 1881)

To the innumerable admirers of
Roughing It and A
Tramp Abroad,
The Prince and the Pauper
is likely to prove a heavy disappointment. The author, a noted representative of American humour, has essayed to achieve a serious book. The consequences are at once disastrous and amazing. The volume, which deals with England in the days of Edward VI., and is announced as “A Tale for Young People of All Ages,” is only to be described as some four hundred pages of careful tediousness, mitigated by occasional flashes of unintentional and unconscious fun. Thus Mr. Clements, who has evidently been reading history, and is anxious about local colour, not only makes a point of quoting documents, and parading authorities, and being fearfully in earnest, but does so with a look of gravity and an evident sense of responsibility that are really delicious. On the whole, however, of Mr. Clements’s many jokes,
The Prince and the Pauper
is incomparably the flattest and worst. To this, as a general reflection it may be added that if to convert a brilliant and engaging humourist into a dull and painful romancer be necessarily a function of the study of history, it cannot be too steadily discouraged.

—December 24, 1881

The book comes upon the reading public in the shape of a revelation. Mr. Clemens is known wherever the English language is spoken as the foremost exponent of that species of humor which is peculiar enough to be called American, but which, in reality, is the humor of the broadest, and wildest, and most boisterous burlesque. Of this humor, “The Jumping Frog” is a fair specimen. In this field and in this vein, Mr. Clemens is without rival, albeit a host of writers have sprung up to pay him the tribute of imitation. In
The Prince
and the Pauper, however, he has made a wide departure from his old methods—so much so that the contrast presents a phase of literary development unique in its proportions and suggestions. The wild western burlesquer, the builder of elephantine exaggerations and comicalities has disappeared, and in his stead we have the true literary artist. All that is really vital in the wild humor of Mark Twain is here, but it is strengthened and refined. The incongruities are nature’s own, and they are handled with marvelous skill and deftness.

—
Atlanta
Constitution
(December 25, 1881)

[Twain’s] powers as a story-teller were evident in hundreds of brief sketches before he proved them in
Tom Sawyer
and
The Prince and the Pauper
. Both of these books, aside from the strength of characterization, are fascinating as mere narratives, and I can think of no living writer who has in higher degree the art of interesting his reader from the first word. This is a far rarer gift than we imagine, and I shall not call it a subordinate charm in Mark Twain’s books, rich as they otherwise are.

—Century
(September 1882)

1. In literature, deviations from plausible reality are sometimes caused by the author’s inattention or ignorance. Sometimes the writer wants to achieve satire or burlesque, allegory or symbolism. Which do you think is the case here?

2. The subtitle of
The Prince and the Pauper
is “A Tale for Young People of All Ages.” What can such a description mean? Would the book be better if it had been written expressly for young or for mature readers?

3. Who or what does Twain blame for the poverty, crime, and misery in this novel?

4. Do you see the novel as a satire of idealized or romanticized fictions about the “merrie olde England” of the medieval and renaissance periods?

5. Is Twain’s depiction of Tudor England convincing? Is it convincing only for people who do not have expert knowledge of the era? How does Twain achieve plausibility for the rest of us? When he fails, what causes the failure?

6. Would you say this novel has a motive? Does it try to make a point? Does it try to convince us about something? Warn us about something? Criticize or advocate something? Or do you think Twain’s purpose was simply to tell a good story, make money, or prove he was not just a humorist?

Camfield, Gregg, ed.
The Oxford Companion to Mark Twain.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. A new and excellent encyclopedic volume on all aspects of Twain’s life and career.

 

Fishkin, Shelley Fisher, ed.
A
Historical Guide to Mark Twain.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. A volume that places Twain in historical context.

 

Kaplan, Fred.
The Singular Mark
Twain: A Biography.
New York: Doubleday, 2003. The latest and most comprehensive biography of Mark Twain.

 

Kaplan, Justin. Mark Twain and His World. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974. A lively illustrated overview of Twain’s life and times.

 

.
Mr.
Clemens
and Mark Twain
. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966. A classic biography on a classic subject; winner of the 1967 Pulitzer Prize for biography.

 

Robinson, Forrest G., ed.
The Cambridge Companion to Mark Twain.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. A thoughtful collection of critical essays.