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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
- Sprache: Englisch
Tales from Shakespeare presents an imaginative distillation of Shakespearean drama into captivating prose, bridging the gap between Elizabethan theatre and the modern reader. With a keen eye for storytelling, the collection skillfully embraces an array of styles from the comedic to the tragic, while preserving the essence of Shakespeare's timeless narratives. Diverse in its inclusion of plays, this anthology offers a harmonious blend of tales that range from the whimsy of enchanted forests to the solemnity of tragic destinies, demonstrating the timeless universality and emotional depth of Shakespeare's work. This literary adaptation provides fresh insights while remaining true to the spirit of the original plays, with particular pieces emerging as poignant reflections on the human condition. Curated by the esteemed Charles and Mary Lamb, this anthology reflects their expertise and passion for making Shakespeare accessible. The Lambs' literary craftsmanship and understanding of early 19th-century sensibilities breathe new life into the Bard's oeuvre, making it relevant to the cultural and historical context of their time. This unique collaboration resonates with the Romantic Movement's emphasis on emotion and imagination, showcasing their ability to distill complex narratives into potent vignettes that appeal to readers of all ages. Recommended for both scholars and newcomers alike, Tales from Shakespeare offers an unparalleled opportunity to explore the multifaceted world of Shakespeare through distilled narratives. The anthology serves as a gateway into the complexities of Shakespearean themes, expressed through diverse perspectives and eloquent prose. Readers seeking to cultivate a deeper understanding of classical literature will revel in the breadth of insights provided. It creates a dialogue between epochs, highlighting the enduring relevance of these stories and inviting reflection and appreciation for Shakespeare'Äôs enduring legacy.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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Tales from Shakespeare
Table of Contents
Introduction
Bringing the tumult of Shakespeare’s stage into the quiet focus of the page, Tales from Shakespeare invites beginners and re-readers alike to encounter love, ambition, jealousy, folly, and forgiveness in shapely, humane narratives that preserve the plays’ moral pressures while welcoming a first, confident step into their world, where choices carry consequence, disguises test truth, and imagination offers a generous path toward understanding.
Composed by the English siblings Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb and first published in 1807, this collection belongs to the tradition of literary adaptation for young readers, presenting prose retellings of selected Shakespeare plays. Rather than anchoring itself in a single locale, the book moves through the varied landscapes of Shakespeare’s imagination—courts and cities, forests and islands—while remaining a work of early nineteenth-century storytelling. Its aim is neither scholarship nor stagecraft; it is a companionable guide, written in accessible language, to help readers approach the plays’ characters, situations, and ethical questions with clarity and delight.
The premise is simple and inviting: each tale distills a play into a coherent narrative, foregrounding the central actions and relationships so that a newcomer can follow the arc without wrestling with Elizabethan idiom. The tone is lucid and warm, the style measured, and the mood generously instructive without turning pedantic. By retaining the emotional logic and atmosphere of the originals, the tales offer a reading experience that is brisk yet resonant—suited to private reading, family sharing, or classroom introduction—preparing readers to grasp who is at stake, what compels them, and why their choices matter.
Across these retellings, familiar Shakespearean concerns surface in approachable form: the testing of love and friendship, the entanglements of authority and rebellion, the sharp edge of envy and suspicion, the demands of justice, and the possibility of reconciliation. The book invites reflection on identity and performance—how people present themselves versus who they are—and on the interplay between chance and intention in human affairs. Without dwelling on intricate subplots, it maintains the plays’ moral complexity, encouraging readers to weigh motives, consider consequences, and recognize the mixed nature of virtue and error in public and private life.
For contemporary readers, the collection remains a hospitable doorway into a body of work that can seem daunting at first encounter. It lowers the barrier of language while preserving the drama’s spirit, making it useful before seeing a production or approaching the plays in full. Its clear prose highlights patterns—recurring dilemmas, archetypal figures, and ethical crossroads—that continue to animate conversations about power, responsibility, loyalty, and mercy. In an age of rapid summaries, these tales model attentive reading, offering enough guidance to orient the newcomer yet leaving room for curiosity, debate, and the pleasures of discovery.
The collaboration itself shapes the book’s character: Mary Lamb is generally associated with the comedies and Charles Lamb with the tragedies, and together they balance lightness and gravity, playfulness and austerity. Their method is selective rather than exhaustive, streamlining intricate action and concentrating on the protagonists’ journeys. They often pause to clarify motives or illuminate a moral hinge, but they avoid moralizing endings, allowing the situations to speak through example. The result is prose that feels companionable and dignified, attentive to feeling and thought, and respectful of the plays’ tonal variety—from festive misapprehensions to somber reckonings.
Approached as an introduction, Tales from Shakespeare offers a bridge between unfamiliar language and enduring stories, between the first spark of interest and sustained engagement. It primes readers to listen for cadence, to notice how small decisions shape large outcomes, and to appreciate how Shakespeare’s worlds hold comedy and tragedy in close conversation. Read on its own, it grants a compact, vivid tour of a dramatic landscape; read alongside the plays, it becomes a map and a lantern. Either way, it marks an inviting start to a longer journey into Shakespeare’s art.
Synopsis (Selection)
Tales from Shakespeare, by Charles and Mary Lamb, retells a selection of Shakespeare’s plays in clear prose for younger readers and general audiences. The authors preserve principal plots, character motives, and moral questions while removing stage detail and archaic language. Mary Lamb adapts the comedies; Charles Lamb recounts the tragedies, together presenting twenty stories. The sequence broadly follows comedies first, then tragedies, concluding with a late romance. Each tale outlines initial circumstances, central conflicts, and pivotal recognitions without extended speeches. The book’s purpose is to introduce themes of love, ambition, justice, and reconciliation, making the plays approachable without presuming prior knowledge.
The collection opens with The Tempest, in which a storm disperses a royal party onto an enchanted island ruled by the learned Prospero and his daughter Miranda. Magic, loyal service, and plots of usurpation guide strangers through trials toward possible amends. A Midsummer Night’s Dream follows, shifting to Athens and a moonlit wood where young lovers, a band of amateur players, and a court of fairies intersect. Mischief with a love potion scrambles affections and identities. The Lambs frame these events as playful confusions that test fidelity and authority, moving from discord toward a restored civic and domestic order.
The Winter’s Tale presents a king seized by sudden jealousy, leading to an unjust accusation, a broken household, and long separation. Time and chance carry the story to pastoral scenes, where hidden origins and tokens prepare the way for recognition. Much Ado About Nothing counterbalances severity with wit, centering on sparring friends drawn into love and on a malicious deception that threatens a wedding. Masks, overheard conversations, and staged scenes propel the action. In both tales, the Lambs emphasize how rumor, credulity, and patience shape outcomes, keeping the narrative forward without theatrical digression.
As You Like It moves to the Forest of Arden, where exile fosters new communities, disguises secure safety, and courtly grievances are reexamined in pastoral ease. The heroine’s assumed identity allows frank speech and controlled testing of affection. The Two Gentlemen of Verona explores friendship strained by love, with promises broken and loyalty challenged across city and countryside. Misdelivered messages and disguises complicate intentions. In these comedies, the prose highlights journeys from rigid social roles toward flexible understandings, letting readers follow motives and reversals clearly to the brink of resolution.
The Merchant of Venice centers on a hazardous loan secured by a bond and on a suitor’s trial by caskets to win an heiress. Themes of debt, mercy, and the letter of the law converge in a courtroom where eloquence contests strict claims. Cymbeline returns to Britain, weaving banishment, a stolen wager on a wife’s virtue, lost princes, and Roman demands into a tale of disguises and mistaken proofs. Tokens, dreams, and battles shift fortunes. The adaptations keep the interlaced plots distinct, guiding readers through perils toward the possibility of reconciliation and recognized identities.
Charles Lamb’s tragedies begin with King Lear, where an aging monarch divides his kingdom by measured professions of love, misjudges sincerity, and is cast into exposure by ingratitude. Parallel betrayals disturb loyal children and wronged fathers. The narrative follows storms, madness, and fidelity under pressure, withholding stage spectacle while preserving the sequence of reversals. Macbeth presents a soldier greeted by prophecy, whose ambition and fear set crimes in motion. Visions, sleeplessness, and mounting suspicion crowd a court disordered by usurpation. The prose traces cause and consequence plainly, emphasizing moral choices without revealing final fates.
All’s Well That Ends Well features a resourceful physician’s daughter who cures a king and claims a reluctant husband, then undertakes stratagems to secure mutual acknowledgment. The Taming of the Shrew depicts a contest of temperaments and tactics in courtship, set beside a masquerade of identities among suitors. The Comedy of Errors turns on separated twins and cascading misrecognitions across a bustling port city, where debts, arrests, and sudden accusations crowd the day. In these stories, the Lambs streamline farce and debate, clarifying motives and stakes while keeping the outcomes just beyond the summary’s edge.
Measure for Measure examines delegated authority, strict enforcement of law, and appeals for mercy, placing a novice’s plea against a magistrate’s rigor. Deceptions are used to test character and to avert public shame. Twelfth Night returns to festivity after a shipwreck, with a heroine disguised as a page serving a melancholy duke, while a noblewoman resists his suit. Crossed affections, pranks, and forged messages entwine households. The adaptations balance tonal shifts, presenting ethical puzzles, revelry, and sober reckonings in sequence, and leading characters toward recognition scenes that the prose signals but does not disclose.
Timon of Athens portrays a generous patron undone by flattery and debt, retreating from a city that fails his expectations. Romeo and Juliet follows concealed courtship across a family divide, where haste, secrecy, and chance drive events. Hamlet centers on a prince confronting a charge of revenge and the uncertainty of appearances. Othello traces a commander’s trust subverted by insinuation, giving jealousy dangerous scope. Pericles, Prince of Tyre closes the volume with riddles, voyages, loss, and improbable reunions. Together, these tales convey the book’s purpose: to preserve clear outlines, moral questions, and the movement from trial toward understanding.
Historical Context
Tales from Shakespeare was created and first published in London in 1807, amid the pressures of war and the rapid enlargement of the capital. The Lambs worked in a city of booksellers and printers along Holborn, Fleet Street, and the Strand, while Charles Lamb was a clerk at the East India House on Leadenhall Street. London’s population surpassed one million by the 1801 census, its streets crowded with circulating libraries, charity schools, and reform societies. The volume appeared from M. J. Godwin and Co.’s Juvenile Library on Skinner Street, Holborn, a retail and intellectual space dedicated to affordable, improving literature for families and the young.
The children’s education movement of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries powerfully shaped the book’s conception. Robert Raikes’s Sunday school initiative in the 1780s, followed by the British and Foreign School Society (1808) and the National Society (1811), expanded basic literacy among working and middling classes. William and Mary Jane Godwin founded the Juvenile Library in 1805 to supply systematic moral instruction through engaging narratives; they commissioned the Lambs to adapt Shakespeare for young readers in 1807. The preface identifies young ladies as a primary audience, reflecting contemporary debates on female education. By simplifying plots while preserving ethical dilemmas, the book aligns with institutional efforts to make high culture instructive and accessible.
The French Revolution of 1789 and the ensuing wars with France (1793 to 1802; renewed 1803 to 1815) formed the political climate in which the Lambs wrote. Britain’s government, fearing sedition, passed the so called Gagging Acts of 1795 and the Combination Acts of 1799 and 1800 to restrain radical assembly and labor organization. Naval victory at Trafalgar in 1805 stirred patriotic identity, while invasion alarms persisted. In this environment, Shakespeare functioned as civic scripture. Tales from Shakespeare offers uncontentious moral exempla drawn from a national author, shorn of topical politics. The cautious, decorous prose reflects a marketplace wary of prosecution yet eager to cultivate loyal, virtuous citizens during wartime.
Industrialization and urbanization intensified demand for family reading. Between 1760 and 1830, Britain’s mechanized production transformed work and leisure; London became a magnet for clerks, artisans, and servants. By around 1800, roughly three fifths of men and two fifths of women in England could sign their names, a proxy for rising literacy. The Health and Morals of Apprentices Act of 1802, though weakly enforced, signaled public concern for child welfare in factories. Within this changing society, Tales from Shakespeare provided reputable home entertainment and instruction, condensing complex drama into short narratives that parents could read aloud after long working days, reinforcing domestic morality in an era of industrial strain.
The abolition of the British transatlantic slave trade in 1807 followed a two decade campaign led by the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade (founded 1787), with parliamentary champions such as William Wilberforce and powerful testimonies by figures like Olaudah Equiano. Though not an abolitionist tract, the Lambs’ retellings intersect contemporary debates about race and empire through plays such as Othello and The Tempest. Their measured presentations of jealousy, authority, and otherness enter a culture reconsidering the ethics of bondage and conquest. The book’s temperate tone avoids polemic while inviting young readers to sympathize with outsiders and to question the justice of domination and prejudice.
Contemporary reforms in the treatment of mental illness cast a shadow over the Lambs’ lives and work. In 1796 Mary Lamb, during a breakdown, killed her mother and was confined in a private madhouse; Charles assumed lifelong responsibility for her care. The Quaker led York Retreat, opened in 1796, pioneered moral treatment, and the County Asylums Act of 1808 enabled local public asylums, signaling gradual change from custodial to humane models. The Lambs’ adaptations of Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, written for children, soften extremities while preserving the ethical gravity of grief and madness. Their choices mirror a society negotiating new compassion for mental distress alongside older fears.
Britain’s imperial expansion framed daily life and employment for the Lambs. Charles worked for the East India Company, which consolidated power after Seringapatam (1799) and captured Delhi in 1803 during the Second Anglo Maratha War. Commercial governance from Leadenhall Street bound London to Bengal and Bombay. National identity, empire, and commerce promoted Shakespeare as a cultural standard bearer at home and abroad. In Tales from Shakespeare, narratives like The Tempest carry the imprint of colonial encounter, recast for polite reading while leaving visible questions of mastery, servitude, and discovery. The book’s provenance in an imperial metropolis connects its moral pedagogy to the global realities of British rule.
As a work of cultural mediation, the book critiques its period by broadening who may claim the moral capital of Shakespeare. Addressing families and especially girls challenges class and gender gatekeeping in education and asserts a civic value for shared culture. By highlighting the injustices of tyranny, cruelty, jealousy, and misrule, the tales refract current anxieties about arbitrary power, war discipline, and legal harshness. Their restrained handling of madness anticipates reformist sympathy, while depictions of outsiders expose contradictions in an empire proclaiming liberty. Without overt agitation, the volume models ethical reflection that quietly disputes social exclusion and the narrowness of state sanctioned moral instruction.
