Literary giants meet in ‘Twain’
Play has been revamped since 2016 premiere, Valerie Plame to emcee
Mark Twain was a Shakespeare skeptic.
The great American author was aware of the Bard from the time he was born. He adapted, adopted, distorted, parodied and twisted Shakespeare whenever he could. You could call it an obsession.
Twain doubted that this glover’s son from Stratfordupon-Avon possessed the background or the education to have become the greatest writer in English history.
“Ever the Twain: William Shakespeare in Mark Twain’s America” explores the lives of the two literary icons in a benefit for the Lensic Performing Arts Center on Tuesday, May 29. Proceeds also will go toward Shakespeare in the Garden and the Santa Fe Botanical Garden.
The staged reading features Jonathan Richards as Shakespeare, Forrest Fyre as Twain and Valerie Plame as the evening’s emcee.
The play explores Shakespeare’s remarkable impact on 19th century America.
A young American woman named Delia Bacon, who fancied herself descended from Sir Francis Bacon, ascribed authorship of the plays to her illustrious forebear. Notable Shakespeare doubters included Walt Whitman, Friedrich Nietzsche and the James brothers — William and Henry, not Frank and Jesse. Twain was right there in the thick of it.
Ironically, “Mark Twain came from a similarly hardscrabble background,” Richards said. “He’s put up on a pretty high pedestal.”
The two authors shared attitudes and interests, especially their ideas about the human condition.
“Shakespeare was much more a people’s artist of popular entertainment in his day,” Richards said. Today “Shakespeare has become somebody you drag your husband off to.”
During the 19th century, British touring companies traveled across the states, setting up revival-like tents in the middle of fields.
Both authors promoted tolerant and humanistic views through their writing.
The runaway slave Jim in “Huckleberry Finn” is the wisest character in the oft-banned book. Similarly, the eloquence of the savage Caliban in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” reduces the Europeans to buffoons.
“He gives a humanity to these people that would not have been the (norm) of his time,” Richards added.