Tales from Shakespeare is an English children's book written by the siblings Charles and Mary Lamb in 1807, intended "for the use of young persons"[1] while retaining as much Shakespearean language as possible.[2] Mary Lamb was responsible for retelling the comedies and Charles the tragedies.[3] They omitted the more complex historical tales, including all Roman plays, and modified those they chose to retell in a manner sensitive to the needs of young children, but without resorting to actual censoring. However, subplots and sexual references were removed.[3] They wrote the preface together.
![]() Fifth edition title page (1831) | |
Author | Charles and Mary Lamb |
---|---|
Language | English |
Genre | Fiction Children's literature |
Publication date | 1807 (first printing) |
Publication place | Great Britain |
Marina Warner, in her introduction to the 2007 Penguin Classics edition, claims that Mary did not get her name on the title page till the seventh edition in 1838.[4]
Despite its original target audience, "very young" children from the early twenty-first century might find this book a challenging read, and alternatives are available. Nevertheless, the retelling of the Lamb siblings remains uniquely faithful to the original[3] and as such can be useful to children when they read or learn the plays as Shakespeare wrote them.[5]
Publication history
editTales from Shakespeare has been republished many times and has never been out of print.[3][5] Charles and Mary Lamb appeared to have anticipated the enormous growth in the popularity of Shakespeare in the nineteenth century, when the book was one of the best-selling titles.[6] It was first published by the Juvenile Library of William Godwin (under the alias Thomas Hodgkins) and his second wife, Mary Jane Clairmont, who chose the illustrations, probably by William Mulready.[7][8][9] Later illustrators included Sir John Gilbert in 1866, Arthur Rackham in 1899 and 1909,[10] Louis Monziès in 1908,[11] Walter Paget in 1910,[12] and D. C. Eyles in 1934.[10]
In 1893-4, the book was supplemented with some additional tales by Harrison S. Morris, and was re-published in the USA as a multi-volume set with colour plate illustrations.[13] As noted in the authors' preface, "[Shakespeare's] 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."
Contents
editThe book contains the following tales:
- The Tempest (Mary Lamb)
- A Midsummer Night's Dream (Mary Lamb)
- The Winter's Tale (Mary Lamb)
- Much Ado About Nothing (Mary Lamb)
- As You Like It (Mary Lamb)
- Two Gentlemen of Verona (Mary Lamb)
- The Merchant of Venice (Mary Lamb)
- Cymbeline (Mary Lamb)
- King Lear (Charles Lamb)
- Macbeth (Charles Lamb)
- All's Well That Ends Well (Mary Lamb)
- The Taming of the Shrew (Mary Lamb)
- The Comedy of Errors (Mary Lamb)
- Measure for Measure (Mary Lamb)
- Twelfth Night (Mary Lamb)
- Timon of Athens (Charles Lamb)
- Romeo and Juliet (Charles Lamb)
- Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (Charles Lamb)
- Othello (Charles Lamb)
- Pericles, Prince of Tyre (Mary Lamb)
In fiction
editThe book is given as a gift in Morley's "Parnassus on Wheels".
Graham Greene uses Tales from Shakespeare for a book code in Our Man in Havana.[14]
Tales from Shakespeare is referenced in the 2018 film The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ Drabble, Margaret (1985). Oxford Companion to English Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 545. ISBN 0-19-866130-4.
- ^ Bose, Sudip (5 October 2015). "Charles and Mary Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare". The American Scholar. Retrieved 27 October 2020.
- ^ a b c d Warner, Marina (5 May 2007). "Evangelists for the bard". Books. The Guardian. Retrieved 28 October 2020.
- ^ Lamb, Charles; Lamb, Mary (2007). "Introduction by Marina Warner". Tales from Shakespeare. Great Britain: Penguin Classics. pp. xvi. ISBN 978-0-141-44162-7.
- ^ a b "A Double Life: A biography of Charles and Mary Lamb, by Sarah Burton". The Independent. 17 August 2003. Archived from the original on 26 May 2022. Retrieved 31 October 2020.
- ^ McCrum, Robert (26 June 2017). "Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb (1807)". Books. The Guardian. Retrieved 29 October 2020.
- ^ Williams, Marcia (15 October 2013). Miller, Naomi (ed.). Reimagining Shakespeare for Children and Young Adults. Routledge.
- ^ William Mulready, from The Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 39.
- ^ Richmond, Velma Bourgeois. Shakespeare as Children's Literature: Edwardian Retellings in Words and Pictures. p. 17.
- ^ a b Norman Wright and David Ashford, Masters of Fun and Thrills: The British Comic Artists Vol. 1, Norman Wright (pub.), 2008, p. 65
- ^ Published by Boston : D. C. Heath & Co., 1908
- ^ "Full Citation". University of Florida Digital Collections. University of Florida. Retrieved 27 July 2012.
- ^ Lamb, Charles; Lamb, Mary; Morris, Harrison S (1893). Tales from Shakespeare including those by Charles and Mary Lamb with a continuation by Harrison S. Morris. J.B. Lippincott Company (Philadelphia).
- ^ "Our Man In Havana by Graham Greene". Penguin Random House. Retrieved 14 August 2017.
External links
edit- Full text and images by William Paget on the University of Florida's Digital Collections
- Full text and images by Robert Anning Bell on the University of Florida's Digital Collections
- Text at shakespeare.palomar.edu
- Text at ibiblio.org
- Tales from Shakespeare public domain audiobook at LibriVox
- Tales from Shakespeare ebook from Project Gutenberg
- Tales from Shakespeare written by Morris, Harrison S. (Harrison Smith), 1856-1948.