<P><B>Balancing humor, insight, and vitriol, this provocative contribution to the tradition of Shakespeare-doubting is a fine example of the great novelist's critical writing</B></P><P><I>"So far as anybody actually knows and can prove, Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon never wrote a play in his life."</I><p>An exponent of the theory that William Shakespeare, the modestly educated provincial man from Stratford-upon-Avon, could not have written the works—full of erudition and accurate professional jargon—which are attributed to him, Mark Twain offers an eloquent and entertaining analysis of this issue of authorship, peppered with personal recollections of his own first encounters with the Bard's plays on a boat on the Mississippi. This volume also includes Twain's racy Elizabethan pastiche, <I>1601</I>, which features Shakespeare as one of its characters, and a 27-page summary of Twain's life and works.