‘Is He Dead?’: Mark Twain Comes Back to Life

‘Is He Dead?’: Mark Twain Comes Back to Life
Mark Twain loved the theater and so he wrote a play. “Children Acting the ‘Play Scene’ from ‘Hamlet,’ Act II, Scene ii,” 1863, by Charles Hunt. Oil on canvas. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut. Public Domain
Jeff Minick
Updated:

To read a play rather than watch it performed is a bit like eating a beef burrito without the accoutrements of salsa, guacamole, or onions. You get the meat of the thing, but it lacks all flair.

The test of this recipe is simple. Have your teenagers read Shakespeare’s “Henry V.” Next, have them watch Kenneth Branagh’s 1989 film adaptation of the same play. Then pack some diced onions into those food missiles, slather on the guacamole, douse them in salsa, and serve them up when your kids ask for a second run on Branagh’s movie.

Jeff Minick
Jeff Minick
Author
Jeff Minick has four children and a growing platoon of grandchildren. For 20 years, he taught history, literature, and Latin to seminars of homeschooling students in Asheville, N.C. He is the author of two novels, “Amanda Bell” and “Dust on Their Wings,” and two works of nonfiction, “Learning as I Go” and “Movies Make the Man.” Today, he lives and writes in Front Royal, Va.
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