Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare is a 1907 collection published by E. Nesbit with the intention of entertaining young readers and retelling William Shakespeare's plays in a way they could be easily understood by younger readers. She also included a brief Shakespeare biography, a pronunciation guide to some of the more difficult names and a list of famous quotations, arranged by subject.[1] Some editions are entitled Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare for Children.
 First US edition. | |
| Author | Edith Nesbit |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Children's novel |
| Publisher | T. Fisher Unwin (UK) D.E. Cunningham & Co. (US) |
Publication date | 1907 |
| Publication place |  United Kingdom |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
The book is an expanded version of Nesbit's earlier book, The Children's Shakespeare (1897), a collection of twelve tales likewise based on plays by William Shakespeare.[2]
Contents
editThe collection includes:
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
- The Tempest
- As You Like It
- The Winter's Tale
- King Lear
- Twelfth Night
- Much Ado About Nothing
- Romeo and Juliet
- Pericles
- Hamlet
- Cymbeline
- Macbeth
- The Comedy of Errors
- The Merchant of Venice
- Timon of Athens
- Othello
- The Taming of the Shrew
- Measure for Measure
- Two Gentlemen of Verona
- All's Well That Ends Well
Reception and analysis
editPublished in 1907, the book has received a number of editions over the later years. Nesbit's collection presents a reworked version of the tales, rewritten to suit what Nesbit considered to be child's mentality and interpretative skills. The tales are sometimes prefaced with the opening "Once upon a time". Iona Opie in her introduction to the 1997 edition praised Nesbit's work by saying that she "has rehabilitated the plays as pure entertainment. She tells the stories with clarity and gusto.... giving the flavour of each play by the skillful use of short quotations"[3]
Erica Hateley described Nesbit's style as follows: "she often retains scraps of the Shakespearean language, but glosses a meaning (or even an interpretation) for it, and quickly summarises entire scenes in brief paragraphs".[2]
References
edit- ^ Marigny Dupuy (Aug 8, 2004), "Tales From Shakespeare", New York Times Children's Books
- ^ a b Hateley, Erica (2010-12-21). Shakespeare in Children's Literature: Gender and Cultural Capital. Taylor & Francis. pp. 44–48. ISBN 978-0-415-88888-2.
- ^ Mišterová, Ivona (2021). "Who is afraid of William Shakespeare? Shakespeare for young adults". Brno Studies in English. 47 (1): 205–222. doi:10.5817/BSE2021-1-11. hdl:11025/47287. ISSN 0524-6881. S2CID 239284469.
External links
edit- Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare at Project Gutenberg
Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare public domain audiobook at LibriVox
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