The Prince and the Pauper

Summary

The Prince and the Pauper opens in London in October 1537, when two boys are born on the same day: Edward Tudor, longed-for son of Henry VIII, and Tom Canty, unwanted son of a thief in Offal Court, off Pudding Lane. Tom is beaten by his father John and his grandmother, but his gentle mother and sisters Nan and Bet love him, and the old priest Father Andrew teaches him reading, a little Latin, and tales of kings. Tom plays at being a prince until the alley boys half believe in him. Wandering to Westminster, he is cuffed by a guard at the palace gate; Prince Edward rescues him, feeds him, and in boyish fun the two trade clothes. Before a mirror they discover they are exact doubles. Edward runs out to punish the guard, is mistaken for the beggar, and is thrown into the street, while Tom, left in the prince's rags of silk, is taken for a prince gone mad. The dying Henry orders that no one speak of his son's distemper. Edward is dragged off by John Canty, who strikes down Father Andrew; Henry dies, and Tom is proclaimed King Edward VI. Edward is rescued at London Bridge by Miles Hendon, a ruined soldier returning home, who humors what he takes for the boy's madness and is knighted with the right to sit in the king's presence. Tom learns court manners with the help of the whipping-boy Humphrey Marlow, frees a man condemned to be boiled alive for a poisoning that was never proved, and spares a woman and her child accused of raising a storm by witchcraft. Edward, carried off by John Canty into a band of vagrants under the Ruffler, hears from Yokel and others how England's laws whip, crop, brand and hang the hungry. He escapes, shelters with peasant women, nearly has his throat cut by a mad hermit who blames Henry VIII for the loss of his abbey, is framed by the thief Hugo for stealing a pig, and goes with Hendon to Hendon Hall, where Miles's brother Hugh has taken his inheritance and his beloved Edith and denies knowing him. In prison Edward sees two Baptist women burned and swears to sweep away cruel laws. When Hendon takes the king's lashes in the stocks, Edward makes him an earl in his heart. Meanwhile Tom grows fond of royalty and, during the Recognition procession, denies his own mother. At Westminster Abbey the true king interrupts the coronation; Tom supports his claim, and Edward proves it by recalling where he hid the lost Great Seal, which Tom had been using to crack nuts. Edward is crowned, honors Hendon as Earl of Kent, makes Tom the King's Ward, and reigns mercifully. Twain wrote the novel in Hartford, dedicated it to his daughters Susie and Clara, and published it in December 1881 in Canada and England, with the American edition dated 1882.

Top Lessons

• A king must learn his people's pain

  Edward begins as a generous but untested prince who has never been hungry, cold or beaten. On the road he is all three, and he meets men mutilated for begging and women burned for their faith. Twain's argument is that mercy in a ruler grows out of knowledge, and that Edward's merciful reign was made possible by what he suffered.

• Loyalty that asks no reward

  Miles Hendon believes the boy is mad, yet he protects him, feeds him, calls him Majesty, and finally takes his lashes in the stocks. His friendship is given before he knows it will be repaid. The novel honors faithfulness that serves the person in front of it, not the rank it expects.

• Clothes, rank and the self

  When the boys trade clothes, the whole kingdom treats each according to his costume. Tom slowly grows into royal habits and even denies his own mother; Edward clings to his identity when no one believes him. The novel asks what part of a person is given by station and what part is his own.

• Justice depends on honest evidence

  As king, Tom questions the case of a man condemned to be boiled alive for poisoning and finds that no one saw poison given and that the case rests on doctors' guesses and a witch's prophecy. His plain common sense saves an innocent man. Twain shows that a cruel penalty joined to careless proof can destroy the innocent.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Madness is the novel's running misunderstanding: Tom's true account of himself is read by the court and its physicians as a distemper caused by over-study and confinement, and Henry VIII prescribes sport and rest and forbids talk of it on pain of death, while everyone in the streets reads Edward's claims the same way. Mrs. Canty tests the boy she suspects is not her son by startling him in his sleep and watching for Tom's habitual gesture of throwing his hand before his eyes, palm outward, which never comes. The hermit is drawn as a true case of religious mania, an ex-monk who believes himself an archangel and plots murder. Chapter XV offers a small study in Tudor forensic medicine: a man is condemned because doctors testified that only poison could cause death with spasms and retching, though no poison was seen or found, and Twain shows how such opinion combined with prophecy to convict. The dying Henry, with his faintness and thirst, the tortures of the stocks, lash and branding iron, and the starvation of vagrants complete a background picture. These are period representations, not clinical portraits.

• Chapter V

  The court and physicians examine Tom in Latin and French and Henry VIII declares him mad from over-study.

• Chapter X

  Mrs. Canty tests whether the boy is really Tom by startling him awake and watching for his old gesture.

• Chapter XV

  A man is condemned to be boiled alive for poisoning on the doctors' word about the symptoms; Tom examines the evidence and frees him.

• Chapter XX

  The mad hermit, believing himself an archangel, binds the sleeping king and sharpens a knife.

• Chapter XVII

  Yokel tells how his mother, who nursed the sick, was burned as a witch when a patient died, and how his children starved.