Comedy, Historical Fiction, and Realism
We're sure that someone out there believes that The Prince and the Pauper is the true story behind a massive conspiracy and cover-up by the Tudor family, but we're gonna be real with you: it's definitely a work of historical fiction. Yeah, it's filled with all kind of details about 16th-century England, and King Edward VI is one of the main characters, but it's still fiction.
The Prince and the Pauper is also a comedy and a work of realism, which is pretty amazing considering that realism is not often a particularly cheerful genre. Now, comedy can mean two things. There's comedy in the sense of funny movies (like something featuring Adam Sandler or Tina Fey), and there's comedy in the sense of Shakespearean stories, where the characters triumph over adversity, even if the stories aren't totally "funny." A lot of these kinds of comedies have cases of mistaken identity, too. Sound familiar?
The Prince and the Pauper is a comedy in both senses. Remember Miles Hendon? Yeah, just the fact that he's one of the characters in this novel is enough to convince us that it's a comedy in the ha-ha sense.
But what about the second meaning of comedy? Let's take a look at the ending: "'What dost thou know of suffering and oppression? I and my people know, but not thou. 'The reign of Edward VI was a singularly merciful one for those harsh times. Now that we are taking leave of him let us try to keep this in our minds, to his credit" (34.12).
If you remember Edward from the beginning of the novel, you'll know that he would never say anything like this. It's only after overcoming all the trials and tribulations he faces as a poor boy that he is able to become the kind of gentle king we see in these last few sentences of the novel. Sounds like a happy ending to us.
But while all of these happy and funny things are going on, there's a lot of sad and troubling stuff taking place in the background. Realism doesn't hide all the dirt and gross stuff of everyday life from readers, and the Mark Twain definitely didn't hide anything from us in this novel.
For example, Tom's neighborhood, Offal Court, and all of the slums are constantly depicted as disgusting places. The narrator says: "The house which Tom's father lived in was up a foul little pocket called Offal Court, out of Pudding Lane. It was small, decayed, and rickety, but it was packed full of wretchedly poor families" (2.2).
That might be the nicest description of Offal Court we can find. But despite all of this, Mark Twain manages not to get us depressed while we romp through the slums. Actually, he manages to get a few chuckles out of us along the way. So a comedy this remains.