“When the duke had got the men very excited and eager to see the show, he opened the curtain and the king came out. He was completely naked and his body was painted every bright color imaginable. He looked wild, but it was very funny. The people almost died laughing. The king did a kind of little dance, and the men laughed louder. They stood up and cheered louder, and the king returned and did the dance one more time. Then he left the stage. The duke closed the curtain and bowed to the men and said that the show would be performed two more times. He said that he was sorry that they could not perform it more often, but that they must soon return to London. He said if they had succeeded in pleasing them, to please ask other men in the town to come to see the show. Twenty people shouted, “What? Has the show ended? Is that all?” Suddenly, the angry crowd stood up and began to move toward the stage. Then a tall, good-looking gentleman jumped up and stood on a chair, shouting, “Stop! Listen to me. We were tricked! We’ve been made to look like fools. But do we want the entire town laughing at us. No! What we have to do is to leave here quietly, tell the others that it was a great show, and try to get all the men of the town to come to see it. Then we’ll all be fools together.”” (Twain 84-5)
In the quotation, the characters the Duke and the King execute their shakespeare play scam. After advertising a shakespeare play for a men only crowd, the King would go on stage naked and dance for a little. After the short dance the play would be over. The crowd gets angry over being scammed but instead of initially mobbing the Duke and the King, they pretend that the play was good in order to trick the rest of the town.
The first interesting aspect is that the Duke and the King are given nicknames that are often synonymous with the rich. Initially this can be interpreted as the Duke and the King can represent the rich. When the King goes up on the stage naked he is described as “wild” and Huckleberry finds the experience funny. Then everyone laughs. After the king is gives his closing speech. The people in the crowd realized that were scammed. One question to ask is that did the crowd deserve being scammed? The crowd went to this event, paid for it then expected a supposed result. They went to a show that was advertised with the tagline, “WOMEN AND CHILDREN NOT ADMITTED”. What they probably expected was an adult, men only explicit yet it doesn’t change the fact that the poster was describing a bunch of shakespeare plays performed by two guys. Regardless what the little substance the show had, the audience got what they paid for. In a wider sense, what did the crowd pay for? In Marxist view, this could be reliance on the system of human exploitation for capital. The south was a society that relied on the use of slaves to do their work. The slaves were bought and sold like everyday objects. They did the chores and housework. Like the play, the people of the south initially saw the practice good as it made them money, made their lives easier and gave them higher place in their society. Maybe like the crowd they saw downside in the ways. The practice was taking the way the slaves rights and it was dehumanizing them. Exactly how the play was advertised, this aspect was always there. The play was always a sub-par shakespearean play performed by two men exactly like how slavery was always going to be the exploitation of people for self benefit.
Yet the “scam” was not the only thing to happen. Instead of lynching the Duke and the King, the crowd decide to trick the rest of the town so they can share the embarrassment. The scam scene shows an interesting dilemma. The crowd decides to bring other people in to the scam rather than condemning the actual con artists. If we continue the analogy from earlier, then this means that the south may have realized the true nature of slavery but instead of condemning the actual cause they decide to be “...all be fools together.” The south not only was ashamed of the use of slavery but in a way to amend what they have done they brought others into the “scam”. For the crowd deciding not to condemn the root cause makes it seem that the use of human capital caused the south to go at extreme lengths to protect the very practice the got them there in the first place. This demonstrates the coward nature of south. The slaves did not show the superiority that was often used in it practice. It showed the true nature of the south which was a representation of the inherent danger of relying on certain economic systems and shows the cowardly lengths some might go to protect them.
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