Other editions of book Tales from Shakespeare: Complete With 20 Original Illustrations

Tales from Shakespeare is an English children's book written by brother and sister Charles and Mary Lamb in 1807. The book is designed to make the stories of Shakespeare's plays familiar to the young. Mary Lamb was responsible for the comedies, while Charles wrote the tragedies; they wrote the preface between them. Marina Warner, in her introduction to the Penguin 2007 edition, says that Mary did not get her name on the title page till the seventh edition in 1838.Tales from Shakespeare has been republished many times. 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. Later illustrators included Sir John Gilbert in 1866, Arthur Rackham in 1899 and 1909, Louis Monziès in 1908,Walter Paget in 1910, and D. C. Eyles in 1934.The following Tales are meant to be submitted to the young reader as an introduction to the study of Shakespeare, for which purpose 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 are 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.

Tales from Shakespeare is an English children's book written by brother and sister Charles and Mary Lamb in 1807. The book is designed to make the stories of Shakespeare's plays familiar to the young. Mary Lamb was responsible for the comedies, while Charles wrote the tragedies; they wrote the preface between them. Marina Warner, in her introduction to the Penguin 2007 edition, says that Mary did not get her name on the title page till the seventh edition in 1838.Tales from Shakespeare has been republished many times. 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. Later illustrators included Sir John Gilbert in 1866, Arthur Rackham in 1899 and 1909, Louis Monziès in 1908,Walter Paget in 1910, and D. C. Eyles in 1934.The following Tales are meant to be submitted to the young reader as an introduction to the study of Shakespeare, for which purpose 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 are 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.

★ Tales from Shakespeare ★The following Tales are meant to be submitted to the young reader as an introduction to the study of Shakespeare, for which purpose 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 are 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.In those tales which have been taken from the Tragedies, the young readers will perceive, when they come to see the source from which these stories are derived, that Shakespeare's own words, with little alteration, recur very frequently in the narrative as well as in the dialogue; but in those made from the Comedies the writers found themselves scarcely ever able to turn his words into the narrative form: therefore it is feared that, in them, dialogue has been made use of too frequently for young people not accustomed to the dramatic form of writing. But this fault, if it be a fault, has been caused by an earnest wish to give as much of Shakespeare's own words as possible: and if the 'He said,' and 'She said,' the question and the reply, should sometimes seem tedious to their young ears, they must pardon it, because it was the only way in which could be given to them a few hints and little foretastes of the great pleasure which awaits them in their elder years, when they come to the rich treasures from which these small and valueless coins are extracted; pretending to no other merit than as faint and imperfect stamps of Shakespeare's matchless image. Faint and imperfect images they must be called, because the beauty of his language is too frequently destroyed by the necessity of changing many of his excellent words into words far less expressive of his true sense, to make it read something like prose; and even in some few places, where his blank verse is given unaltered, as hoping from its simple plainness to cheat the young reader into the belief that they are reading prose, yet still his language being transplanted from its own natural soil and wild poetic garden, it must want much of its native beauty. ...The 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)