Chapters 1-3 Summary

The Prince and the Pauper, by Mark Twain, tells a story set in the 1500s of two unrelated boys who look exactly like each other and who accidentally switch identities, confusing everyone but themselves. One boy is poor, from a family of beggars and thieves, and the other is Prince of Wales, heir to the throne of England. In a note before the first chapter, Twain suggests that this tale has been passed down through generations, and might or might not have happened. In Chapter 1, "The Birth of the Prince and the Pauper," he sets the story in London around the middle of the sixteenth century, and describes the birth of a child named Tom to a poor family named Canty, who did not want him. He compares this to the birth on the same day of Edward Tudor, the real...