It took us approximately 5 years to finally read through all the plays, but we did it and this will forever be a favorite! We used peg dolls to act out the plays and it helped tremendously with our understanding. This is a fabulous introduction to Shakespeare.

The edition I have was published in 1863. I got it several years ago in Amsterdam. These snippits of Shakespeare provide a wonderful overview for many of his best known works. They were written to instruct young children (particularly nineteenth century girls) on the basic stories in Shakespeare's plays, so that when they grew older and began studying Shakespear in earnest, they would already be familiar with the basics and could focus on learning the more subtle parts of his work. Even as an adult, I find them enjoyable and useful. I pulled this book down today to refresh my memory on a play that I'm going to see later this evening.

Of course there are many newer editions out there with these same brief summaries by Charles and Mary Lamb. I would recommend every household have one. The beauty of this collection of stories is that it makes Shakespeare accessible to people of all ages and all stages of learning.

I added this to my want-to-reads after coming upon a reference to it in Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana—which, by the way, has become one of my go-to ways of discovering good books. When a great author name-drops a book, I figure it’s worth looking into.

As any blurb about Tales from Shakespeare will tell you, it’s a collection of prose summaries of Shakespeare’s plays, originally intended for children, written by siblings Charles and Mary Lamb, first published in 1807. Never out of print, it is now considered a classic in its own right, providing readers a pretty authentic experience of the originals in condensed form. However, with its archaic language and pre-Victorian prose style (convoluted sentences strung together with multiple colons and semicolons), I don’t think many children below 15 or 16 would be willing and able to slog through it today.

As an aside, while I’m giving this book 5 stars, the particular edition I read gets one or none. Published by an outfit called Natal Publishing LLC, it’s chock full of typos and poorly formatted almost to the point of being unformatted. After a little internet sleuthing, I came to the conclusion that they had simply downloaded the text from Project Gutenberg and printed it with zero cleanup or enhancements. Ugh. If I read it again I’ll buy a better copy from a publisher that deserves the name.

A charming retelling of several of the stories in Shakespeare"a plays. Told in the form of short stories. I would have adored this as a child.

anthology of shakespeare's plays adapted into bedtime-like children's stories! made the plot super easy to understand, whilst maintaining the aura and prose of shakespeare's writing *thumbs up*

read: the tempest, king lear and a midsummer night's dream

Need to get to know some of the plays from Shakespeare that you haven't read or seen. This is the book. It is in the public domain so it is easy to read or listen too. I listened to a librivox version with Karen Savage as the narrator. It was great.

============================
أدب شكسبير لا يُقدَّم هكذا
حتى إن كان العمل للناشئين
سيء للغاية
=============================

الكتاب جيد ، اختصر أكثر من رواية شهيرة لشكسبير وعرضها
المشكلة في كل روايات شكسبير أن الشخصيات التي يقطر قلبها شراً منذ بداية الرواية تتغير فجأة وتشعر بالندم لمجرد ان شخصاً ما أنبها وذكرها بكل السوء الذي فعلته
ارى هذا غير واقعي وسبب ضعيف لتغير الأحداث

A lovely book for those who want to get the gist of Shakespeare (and/or children). Lovely prose. Good bedtime story book, although you may have to explain some words. :)

Delightful to listen to. I chose this book because I was intrigued by how it came to be. Charles Lamb and his sister Mary Lamb collaborated to condense a collection of some of Shakespeare’s best known and loved major works after Mary had stabbed their mother to death and was committed to a mental institution. Charles visited her daily and they worked together on this book. Their target readers were young people and readers new to Shakespeare. Good narration. Appropriate for adults, as well.

I read this in the context of reading all of Shakespeare in a year. Understandably, the Lambs' version pales in comparison. It was a good review of (and in a few cases, introduction to) the Bard's plays, twenty in all.

The Lambs pared down the plot lines, bowdlerized the bawdy bits, but always slipped in some real Shakespeare to the story.

My first acquaintance with Shakespeare, back when I was 16 years old. I was not so fond of it at the time, but later reading made me appreciate these beautiful prose stories much better!