The Prince and the Pauper is a charming story, a bit like a fairy tale and like fairy tales, with a dark underside. Original illustration by Frank Thayer Merrill He even learns to like being prince and awes the lords and ladies with his wisdom in administering law.

He learns how to put on lordly manners, pumps his whipping boy for important information he ought to posses as prince and learns to minimize the kind of talk that leads people to assume he’s deranged. Tom, on the other hand, initially denies being the prince, but adapts to the situation fairly well. he doesn’t adapt particularly well to his new surroundings and requires a rescuer in Miles Hendon, a soldier of fortune. He is the prince and so he assumes that it should be enough for him simply to declare himself. Meanwhile, Edward goes about London in his ragged clothes proclaiming that he is the prince and people assume likewise that he is mad.īut Edward’s identity of prince is so deeply ingrained in him by education that it honestly never occurs to him that people might find it difficult to believe he is who he says. They account for the fact that he denies being the prince, and that he seems to have forgotten important information, by assuming that he has temporarily lost his mind. This brings up another theme: the difference between a king and a beggar is only the clothes and the way he is treated by others.īut after Tom and Edward change clothes, the prince goes outside and is mistaken for the beggar and thrown off the palace grounds while all the nobleman assume Tom is really the prince. When they meet by chance and exchange clothes, they realize that they look alike and that apart from the clothes, there is no way to tell who is prince and who is beggar (though Tom’s mother can tell them apart later – unlike everyone else, she truly knows her son and his unique quirks there seems to be no one who truly knows Edward).

The Prince and the Pauper, published in 1881, seems to blend the Cinderella archetype with the rich-person in-disguise-who-discovers-how-people-really-live archetype.Tom Canty is a beggar and Edward is the son of Henry VIII. After reading it again, I have concluded that it is indeed a reasonable adaption, though there are a number of notable differences that I had forgotten. When I reviewed the film The Prince and the PauperI wrote that the movie was a reasonably faithful adaption of the book, though I hadn’t read it since I was a child.

Mark twain book prince and the pauper