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Tales from Shakespeare

Charles Lamb

Start date: April 1, 2025

Finish date: June 30, 2025

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Nov 21, 2020 Manybooks rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: childrens-literature, shakespeare-prose-adaptations, book-reviews

For a book originally penned by siblings Charles and Mary Lamb in 1807, their generally brilliant and delightfully readable prose adaptations of twenty of William Shakespeare’s plays, their Tales From Shakespeare, has in my opinion truly held up and aged remarkably well (and is seemingly also still in current print, although some of the out of print earlier editions of Tales From Shakespeare with Arthur Rackham’s visually stunning accompanying artwork are certainly and in my opinion well worth i For a book originally penned by siblings Charles and Mary Lamb in 1807, their generally brilliant and delightfully readable prose adaptations of twenty of William Shakespeare’s plays, their Tales From Shakespeare, has in my opinion truly held up and aged remarkably well (and is seemingly also still in current print, although some of the out of print earlier editions of Tales From Shakespeare with Arthur Rackham’s visually stunning accompanying artwork are certainly and in my opinion well worth investigating and checking out, but of course as collectible often rather dear price wise as well). And yes indeed, I also do rather wish that I had encountered Tales From Shakespeare as a young reader (for even though I did totally enjoy reading Shakespeare plays in junior and senior high English, if I had read Tales From Shakespeare prior to that, I do think I would have had more of an appreciation of the Bard of Avon, and yes, some of the more complex tragedies we read for school, such as Hamlet and King Lear, they would most definitely and likely have been easier to understand and less complicated).

But as much as I have truly enjoyed Tales From Shakespeare and do consider it a wonderful prose adaptation of and introduction to William Shakespeare’s comedies and tragedies (with most of the comedies being rendered by Mary Lamb and the tragedies by her brother Charles Lamb), personally, I am also rather furious and flabbergasted that the Lambs have included neither ANY of the British history plays nor the so-called Roman dramas. And since sadly and unfortunately, this shortcoming of course means that some of my very favourite Shakespeare plays, like Henry IV (parts one and two), Henry V, Julius Caesar and Anthony and Cleopatra are therefore really and truly missing in action, I absolutely cannot and will not completely consider Tales From Shakespeare as a personal favourite and am indeed annoyed enough with regard to the British history and the Roman plays having been left out of Tales From Shakespeare that I will only be able to consider a three star ranking, a high three star rating no doubt and I do still highly recommend Tales From Shakespeare but the gaps, that certain types of Shakespeare plays are seemingly simply en masse being ignored by Charles and Mary Lamb, this does indeed rather majorly bother me.

And as a small caveat if parents are planning on using Tales From Shakespeare to introduce the Bard of Avon and his plays to their children, considering that Mary Lamb suffered from serious mental imbalances for most of her life and actually wrote her contributions to Tales From Shakespeare whilst incarcerated at a sanatorium because she had stabbed her mother to death, it might well be prudent to make sure that children are able to sufficiently handle this information before confronting them with this (and that yes, there also might indeed and actually be questions raised with regard to Mary Lamb’s matricide and for example if this equally might have affected Mary Lamb’s adaptations of Shakespeare). ...more

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May 19, 2025 GONZA rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: posseduto, goodreadsgroups

This seems to be a fancy glossary, but it actually served to remind me of works and characters I had forgotten and to discover those I had never read. In many cases at the end of a story I had a headache because Shakespeare is really very convoluted in some of his plots....

Questo sembra essere un bignami di lusso, ma in realtá mi é servito per ricordarmi le opere ed i personaggi che avevo dimenticato e scoprire quelle che non avevo mai letto. In molti casi alla fine di una storia avevo mal di te ...more

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Sep 26, 2011 Radwa rated it it was amazing

Again, another school-related book
but this one i enjoyed greatly
maybe because they transformed Shakespeare's most amazing plays
into a novel-form .. which i like more :)
has some of Shakespeare's best work! ...more

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Mar 03, 2020 Nancy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: children-s-book, shakespeare

I learned about this book, by reading The Letter's of Charles Lamb. I learned a lot from this children's version of Shakespeare's plays. Now I am going on to read the original plays. ...more

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