1601: Conversation as It Was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors
1901
1601: Conversation as It Was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors
1901
Mark Twain's most scandalous work imagines Queen Elizabeth I's court in candid conversation - and what conversation it is. In the private chambers of the Virgin Queen, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Sir Walter Raleigh, and the Earl of Southampton dispense with dignity to discuss matters no Victorian gentleman would utter aloud: flatulence, menstruation, the mechanics of conception. The brilliance lies in the clash. These immortal figures of English literature speak in the towering, elaborate prose of the Elizabethan stage while debating topics so crude they got Twain arrested in more than one American city. Originally circulated privately in 1880 and published (barely) in 1901, 1601 remains a gleeful grenade tossed at the pomposity of high culture. Twain understood that the great minds of history were as human as the rest of us - and far funnier. This is satire that refuses to be respectable, delivered in language so dignified it makes the subject matter somehow even more obscene.
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“will masturbate until he hath enrich'd whole acres with his seed.””
— Mark Twain
“Human taste is a curious thing; delicacy is purely a matter of environment and point of view. (Quoting John Hay)””
— Mark Twain
“It makes a body ooze sarcasm at every pore, to go about Rome and Florence and see what this last generation has been doing with the statues. These works, which had stood in innocent nakedness for ages, are all figleaved now. Yes, every one of them. Nobody noticed their nakedness before, perhaps; nobody can help noticing it now,the figleaf makes it so conspicuous. (Quoting Mark Twain/Samuel Clemens)””
— Mark Twain
“Gently, slowly, with no profane inflexions of voice, but irresistibly as though they had the headwaters of the Mississippi for their source, came this stream of unholy adjectives and choice expletives. (Quoting Elizabeth Wallace)””
— Mark Twain
“Sort of amusing it was”
— Mark Twain
“With Clemens it may truly be said that profanity was an art”
— Mark Twain
“Whitman and the Bible are no more obscene than Nature herself”
— Mark Twain
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Twain, Mark. 1601: Conversation as It Was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors. Lex, lex-books.com/book/1601-conversation-as-it-was-by-the-social-fireside-in-the-time-of-the-tudors-30b4c2a3-cafa-470a-b552-04de8da43e4b.Twain, M. (1901). 1601: Conversation as It Was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/1601-conversation-as-it-was-by-the-social-fireside-in-the-time-of-the-tudors-30b4c2a3-cafa-470a-b552-04de8da43e4bTwain, Mark. 1601: Conversation as It Was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/1601-conversation-as-it-was-by-the-social-fireside-in-the-time-of-the-tudors-30b4c2a3-cafa-470a-b552-04de8da43e4b.
