Readings Classics: The Prince and the Pauper

Description

Two boys exchange their clothes and their lives in Mark Twain’s classic satiric comedy.

They are the same age. They look alike. In fact, there is but one difference between them: Tom Canty is a child of the London slums; Edward Tudor is heir to the throne of England. Just how insubstantial this difference really is becomes clear when a chance encounter leads to an exchange of roles…with the pauper caught up in the pomp and folly of the royal court, and the prince wandering, horror-stricken, through the lower depths of sixteenth-century English society.

Out of the theme of switched identities, Mark Twain has fashioned both a scathing attack upon social hypocrisy and injustice and an irresistible comedy imbued with the sense of high-spirited play that belongs to his most creative period.

Author Biography

Mark Twain was the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, born in Missouri in 1835. He was a typesetter, a river-boat pilot on the Mississippi and a gold prospector before achieving enormous fame as a writer and public speaker. On his death in 1910 President William Howard Taft said of him: “Mark Twain gave pleasure – real intellectual enjoyment – to millions, and his works will continue to give such pleasure to millions yet to come… His humour was American, but he was nearly as much appreciated by Englishmen and people of other countries as by his own countrymen. He has made an enduring part of American literature.”