Is He Dead?

Is He Dead? is a play by Mark Twain. It was first published in print in 2003, after Mark Twain scholar Shelley Fisher Fishkin read the manuscript in the archives of the Mark Twain Papers at the University of California at Berkeley. The project is the world's largest collection of Mark Twain's manuscripts, letters, facsimiles, photographs, first and early editions, scholarly works on his life and times, and other ephemera. The play was long known ... more

Is He Dead? is a play by Mark Twain. It was first published in print in 2003, after Mark Twain scholar Shelley Fisher Fishkin read the manuscript in the archives of the Mark Twain Papers at the University of California at Berkeley. The project is the world's largest collection of Mark Twain's manuscripts, letters, facsimiles, photographs, first and early editions, scholarly works on his life and times, and other ephemera. The play was long known to scholars but never attracted much attention until Fishkin arranged to have it published in book form. She later played a primary role in getting the play produced on Broadway. Written in 1898 in Vienna, the play focuses on a fictional version of the great French painter Jean-Francois Millet as an impoverished artist in Barbizon, France who, with the help of his colleagues, stages his death in order to increase the value of his paintings. Combining elements of burlesque, farce, and social satire, the comedy relies on such devices as cross... less