The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 12.0689  Wednesday, 21 March 2001

[1]     From:   Takashi Kozuka <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Tuesday, 20 Mar 2001 21:55:31
        Subj:   Re: Mark Twain

[2]     From:   Tom Dale Keever <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Tuesday, 20 Mar 2001 19:11:59 -0500 (EST)
        Subj:   Re: SHK 12.0667 Mark Twain's 'same name' Comment

[3]     From:   Peter Groves <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Wednesday, 21 Mar 2001 13:44:05 +1100
        Subj:   Re: SHK 12.0667 Mark Twain's 'same name' Comment


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Takashi Kozuka <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Tuesday, 20 Mar 2001 21:55:31
Subject:        Re: Mark Twain

This isn't an answer to the 'same name' enquiry Charles posted. (Sorry,
Charles!)

Norrie Epstein's Friendly Shakespeare (1993) has the following passage
from Twain. Unfortunately, she doesn't identify her source (so her book
is not really friendly). (If any SHAKSPERean knows it, please let me
know!) I thought I should cite it on here, as I think this is
Shakespeareanly witty as well as cynical.

"I feel that our fetish [with Shakespeare] is safe for three centuries
yet.  The bust too -- there in the Stratford Church. The precious bust,
the calm bust, the serene bust, the emotionless bust, with the dandy
mustache and the putty face, unseamed of care -- the face which looked
passionlessly down upon the awed pilgrims for a hundred and fifty years
and will still look down upon the awed pilgrims three hundred more, with
the deep, deep, deep, subtle, subtle, subtle, expression of a bladder."

Takashi Kozuka
PhD Student
Centre for the Study of the Renaissance
University of Warwick (UK)
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Tom Dale Keever <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Tuesday, 20 Mar 2001 19:11:59 -0500 (EST)
Subject: 12.0667 Mark Twain's 'same name' Comment
Comment:        Re: SHK 12.0667 Mark Twain's 'same name' Comment

Charles Edelman asks

>Can anyone locate a source for the comment attributed to Mark Twain,
>that Shakespeare did not write the plays, 'they were written by someone
>else of the same name'?

>It does NOT appear in the essay, 'Is Shakespeare Dead?' -- and I wonder
>if the saying is apocryphal rather than genuine.

I first heard this "generico-eponymic paradox," as Tanaka Tomoyuki calls
it, from my Greek instructor, Prof. Seaman, who employed it on Homer,
not Shakespeare.  I doubt he invented it.  It has been applied to both
writers over the years and I suspect the attribution to Twain is an
inevitable accretion since it sounds so much like something he might
have said.

[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Peter Groves <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Wednesday, 21 Mar 2001 13:44:05 +1100
Subject: 12.0667 Mark Twain's 'same name' Comment
Comment:        Re: SHK 12.0667 Mark Twain's 'same name' Comment

> Can anyone locate a source for the comment attributed to Mark Twain,
> that Shakespeare did not write the plays, 'they were written by someone
> else of the same name'?
>
> It does NOT appear in the essay, 'Is Shakespeare Dead?' -- and I wonder
> if the saying is apocryphal rather than genuine.

I always thought the remark was made of Homer (who was being
'disintegrated' by scholarship long before Shakespeare).

Peter L. Groves

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