You probably know him for the white suit, the cigar, and the Mississippi River. Most of us grew up with Tom Sawyer whitewashing a fence or Huck Finn floating on a raft. But there is a weird, frantic, and honestly somewhat desperate side to Samuel Clemens that the history books usually skip over. Basically, he spent decades trying to become a Broadway tycoon.
The plays written by mark twain are not exactly the stuff of literary legend—at least not in the way his novels are. In fact, for most of his life, his attempts to write for the stage were kind of a mess. He was obsessed with the theater, mostly because he saw it as a massive "get rich quick" scheme. He watched other writers make a killing on royalties and figured, "How hard could it be?"
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Turns out, pretty hard. Even for a genius.
The Colonel Sellers Phenomenon (And the Chaos That Followed)
The biggest hit among plays written by mark twain wasn't even entirely his own. In 1874, a play titled Colonel Sellers (sometimes called The Gilded Age) hit the stage. It was based on the novel he co-wrote with Charles Dudley Warner. But here's the kicker: Twain actually sued to get the rights to dramatize his own character after a guy named Gilbert Densmore beat him to the punch with a bootleg version.
Twain eventually took Densmore's script, tweaked it, and turned it into a massive success. The character of Colonel Sellers—a delusional, lovable optimist who is always one "investment" away from a billion dollars—struck a chord. It made Twain a ton of money.
Naturally, he learned all the wrong lessons from this.
He spent the next twenty years trying to catch lightning in a bottle again. He tried collaborating. He tried going solo. He even tried writing a play about a "heathen Chinee" with his rival Bret Harte, which turned into one of the most awkward disasters in American theater history.
The Disaster of Ah Sin
In 1877, Twain and Bret Harte teamed up for Ah Sin. On paper, it looked like a gold mine. They were the two most famous writers in America at the time. But they hated each other. Like, truly despised each other by the time the curtain rose.
Twain later wrote that Harte was "a man who has no more conscience than a grizzly bear."
The play itself was a chaotic mining-camp drama that relied on some pretty cringey racial stereotypes that don't hold up today. The plot was a mess—a murder mystery where the "victim" just shows up at the end like nothing happened. The audience in Washington D.C. and New York mostly laughed at the play, not with it. It flopped. Twain lost a small fortune, and he never spoke to Harte again.
Why Mark Twain Kept Writing Plays (Even When They Failed)
You've got to understand the financial pressure the guy was under. Twain was a terrible businessman. He invested in a "revolutionary" typesetting machine that basically ate $300,000 of his money (which is millions today). He was constantly on the edge of bankruptcy.
Plays were his "moonshot."
If he could get a play to run for a year in New York, he could pay off his debts. This led to some really strange creative choices. For instance, he spent way too much time on a play called The American Claimant, which featured a character who thought he could "materialize" the spirits of the dead. It was... weird. Even his best friends, like William Dean Howells, had to gently tell him it wasn't good.
The "Lost" Play: Is He Dead?
Honestly, the most interesting story about plays written by mark twain didn't happen until 2003.
A scholar named Shelley Fisher Fishkin was digging through the Mark Twain Papers at Berkeley and found a manuscript from 1898 called Is He Dead? It’s a comedy about a French painter who fakes his own death to make the value of his paintings skyrocket. To pull it off, he has to dress up as his own widowed sister.
It’s basically a 19th-century version of Mrs. Doubtfire meets The Producers.
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Twain never got it produced during his lifetime. He tried, but managers told him it was too expensive or too risky. It sat in a drawer for over a century. When it finally premiered on Broadway in 2007 (adapted by David Ives), critics were shocked. It was actually funny. It had that sharp, biting Twain wit that his other plays lacked.
What Really Happened With Mark Twain's Dramatic Career
If you look at the full list of plays written by mark twain, you see a man who was a master of the sentence but a novice of the scene. He struggled with "stagecraft." He could write incredible dialogue, but he didn't know how to get people on and off a stage without it feeling clunky.
Here is the "highlight reel" of his dramatic output:
- Colonel Sellers (1874): The only real financial success. It ran for years and kept the lights on at his Hartford mansion.
- Ah Sin (1877): The "toxic" collaboration with Bret Harte. A total train wreck.
- The Prince and the Pauper: He didn't write the main stage version (Abby Sage Richardson did), but he fought tooth and nail over the royalties.
- The American Claimant (1887): Co-written with Howells. It was a failure on stage but he eventually turned it into a novel to recoup the loss.
- Is He Dead? (1898): The "lost" masterpiece that succeeded 100 years too late.
Why It Still Matters
We usually think of Twain as this untouchable icon of American letters. Seeing him struggle with playwriting makes him more human. He was a guy who got frustrated, who fought with his co-authors, and who sometimes wrote absolute garbage just to try and pay his mortgage.
There is a lesson here about "staying in your lane," I guess. Twain was the greatest storyteller of his generation, but the moment he had to fit those stories into the three-walled box of a theater, he tripped over the rug.
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Actionable Insights for Twain Fans
If you want to actually experience this side of Twain without reading dusty archives, there are a few things you can do right now:
- Read the David Ives adaptation of Is He Dead? It's the most accessible version of Twain’s dramatic voice. It captures the "widow" humor and the satire of the art world perfectly.
- Look for the "Colonel Sellers" character in The American Claimant. Since the play is hard to find, the novel version is the best way to see the character that once made Twain the king of the New York stage.
- Check out local theater licenses. Is He Dead? is actually a very popular play for community theaters and colleges now. There is a high chance a production is happening somewhere near you because it’s a "new" work by a "classic" author.
Twain’s failure as a playwright is just as important as his success as a novelist. It shows the grit of a writer who wasn't afraid to look like a fool in front of a live audience.
Next time you see a play, think about Sam Clemens sitting in the back of a theater in 1877, watching Ah Sin go down in flames, and wondering if he should just go back to writing about that kid on the raft.