Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare

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.

Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare.
First US edition.
AuthorEdith Nesbit
Country United Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
GenreChildren's novel
PublisherT. Fisher Unwin (UK)
D.E. Cunningham & Co. (US)
Publication date
1907
Media typePrint (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

The collection includes:

  1. A Midsummer Night's Dream
  2. The Tempest
  3. As You Like It
  4. The Winter's Tale
  5. King Lear
  6. Twelfth Night
  7. Much Ado About Nothing
  8. Romeo and Juliet
  9. Pericles
  10. Hamlet
  11. Cymbeline
  12. Macbeth
  13. The Comedy of Errors
  14. The Merchant of Venice
  15. Timon of Athens
  16. Othello
  17. The Taming of the Shrew
  18. Measure for Measure
  19. Two Gentlemen of Verona
  20. All's Well That Ends Well

Reception and analysis

Published 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
  1. Marigny Dupuy (Aug 8, 2004), "Tales From Shakespeare", New York Times Children's Books
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
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