Tales from Shakespeare
Lamb Mary 1764-1847;Lamb Charles 1775-1834
English
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Below is a summary of Tales from Shakespeare
TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE
By CHARLES & MARY LAMB
ILLUSTRATED BY ARTHUR RACKHAM
_WEATHERVANE BOOKS NEW YORK_
Copyright © MCMLXXV by Crown Publishers, Inc.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 75-18860
All rights reserved.
This edition is published by Weathervane Books, a division of Barre
Publishing Company, Inc.
Manufactured in the United States of America
PREFACE
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 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.
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 readers 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.
It has been wished to make these Tales easy reading for very young
children. To the utmost of their ability the writers have constantly
kept this in mind; but the subjects of most of them made this a very
difficult task. It was no easy matter to give the histories of men and
women in terms familiar to the apprehension of a very young mind. For
young ladies too, it has been the intention chiefly to write; because
boys being generally permitted the use of their fathers' libraries at a
much earlier age than girls are, they frequently have the best scenes of
Shakespeare by heart, before their sisters are permitted to look into
this manly book; and, therefore, instead of recommending these Tales to
the perusal of young gentlemen who can read them so much better in the
originals, their kind assistance is rather requested in explaining to
their sisters such parts as are hardest for them to understand: and when
they have helped them to get over the difficulties, then perhaps they
will read to them (carefully selecting what is proper for a young
sister's ear) some passage which has pleased them in one of these
stories, in the very words of the scene from which it is taken; and it
is hoped they will find that the beautiful extracts, the select
passages, they may choose to give their sisters in this way will be much
better relished and understood from their having some notion of the
general story from one of these imperfect abridgments;--which if they
be fortunately so done as to prove delightful to any of the young
readers, it is hoped that no worse effect will result than to make them
wish themselves a little older, that they may be allowed to read the
Plays at full length (such a wish will be neither peevish nor
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