Tales From Shakespeare

Tales from Shakespeare  was written by Charles Lamb (1775-1834) and his sister Mary Lamb (1764-1847) in 1807 as a prose adaptation for children. We present here the edition as illustrated by Arthur Rackham (1867-1939) in 1899 and 1909. Mary wrote most of the comedies, about 14 of the 20.

Contents

• Preface
• The Tempest
• A Midsummer Night's Dream
• The Winter's Tale
• Much Ado About Nothing
• As You Like It
• The Two Gentlemen of Verona
• The Merchant of Venice
• Cymbeline
• King Lear
• Macbeth
• All's Well That Ends Well
• The Taming of the Shrew
• The Comedy of Errors
• Measure for Measure
• Twelfth Night; or, What You Will
• Timon of Athens
• Romeo and Juliet
• Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
• Othello
• Pericles, Prince of Tyre

Notes

To conclude, Tales from Shakespeare was an English children's book. It was illustrated by Arthur Rackham in 1899 and 1909. The book reduced the archaic English and complicated storyline of Shakespeare to a simple level that children could read and comprehend. However, as noted in the Author's Preface, "his words are used whenever it seemed possible to bring them in; and in whatever has been added to give them the regular form of a connected story, diligent care has been taken to select such words as might least interrupt the effect of the beautiful English tongue in which he wrote: therefore, words introduced into our language since his time have been as far as possible avoided."

Mary Lamb was responsible for most of the comedies, while her brother wrote most of the tragedies; they wrote the preface between them.