Is Shakespeare Dead? is a short, semi-autobiographical work by American novelist and humorist Mark Twain. It explores the controversy over the authorship of the Shakespearean literary canon via satire, anecdote, and extensive quotation of contemporary authors on the subject. The work was written in the height of Baconian authorship and prior to Thomas Looney's discovery of disgraced, erased from history 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere. It remains one of the most biting examinations about the Stratford biography constructed from conjectures and assumptions far removed from historical facts.
