Is Shakespeare Dead? From My Autobiography By Mark Twain (1909)

SHAKESPEARE DEAD FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY S CATTERED here and there through the stacks of unpublished rnanu script which constitute this formidable Autobiography and Diary of mine, cer tain chapters will in some distant future be found which deal with Claimants - claimants historically notorious Satan, Claimant the Golden Calf, Claimant the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, Claim ant Louis XVII., Claimant William Shakespeare, Claimant Art hur Orton, Claimant Mary Baker G. Eddy, Claim- ant-and the rest of them. Eminent Claimant S, success ul Claimants, defeated Claimants, royal Claimants, pleb Claimants, showy Claimants, shabby Claim ants, revered Claimants, despised Claimants, twinkle starlike here and there and yonder through the mists of history and legend and tradition-and oh, all the darling tribe are clothed in mystery and romance, and we read about them with deep interest and discuss them with loving sympathy or with rancorous resentment, according to which side we hitch ourselves to. It has always been so with the human race. There was nev er a Claimant that couldnt get a hear ing, nor one that couldnt accumulate a rapturous following, no matter how I flimsy and apparently unauthentic his claim might be. Arthur Ortons claim that he was the lost Tichborne baronet come to life again was as flimsy as Mrs. Eddys that she wrote Science and Health from the direct dictation of the Deity yet in England near forty years ago Orton had a huge army of devotees and incorrigible adherents, many of whom remained stubbornly unconvinced after their fat god had been proven an impostor and jailed as a perjurer, and to-day Mrs. Eddys following is not only immense, busis daily augmenting in numbers andenthusiasm. Orton had many fine and educated minds among his adherent S, Mrs. Eddy has had the like among hers from the beginning. Her church is as well equipped in those particulars as is any other church. Claimants can al ways count upon a following, it doesnt matter who they are, nor what they claim, nor whether they come with docu ments or without. It was always so. Down out of the long-vanished past, across the abyss of the ages, if you listen you can still hear the believing multi tudes shouting for Perkin Warbeck and Lambert Simnel...