lurks in the pages of Mark Twain's 1601.


DROLL STORY

"In a way," observed William Marion Reedy, "1601 is to Twain's whole
works what the 'Droll Stories' are to Balzac's. It is better than the
privately circulated ribaldry and vulgarity of Eugene Field; is, indeed,
an essay in a sort of primordial humor such as we find in Rabelais, or in
the plays of some of the lesser stars that drew their light from
Shakespeare's urn. It is humor or fun such as one expects, let us say,
from the peasants of Thomas Hardy, outside of Hardy's books. And, though
it be filthy, it yet hath a splendor of mere animalism of good spirits...
I would say it is scatalogical rather than erotic, save for one touch
toward the end. Indeed, it seems more of Rabelais than of Boccaccio or
Masuccio or Aretino--is brutally British rather than lasciviously
latinate, as to the subjects, but sumptuous as regards the language."

Immediately upon first reading, John Hay, later Secretary of State, had
proclaimed 1601 a masterpiece. Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain's
biographer, likewise acknowledged its greatness, when he said, "1601 is a
genuine classic, as classics of that sort go. It is better than the
gross obscenities of Rabelais, and perhaps in some day to come, the taste
that justified Gargantua and the Decameron will give this literary
refugee shelter and setting among the more conventional writing of Mark
Twain. Human taste is a curious thing; delicacy is purely a matter of
environment and point of view."

"It depends on who writes a thing whether it is coarse or not," wrote
Clemens in his notebook in 1879. "I built a conversation which could