Tales from Shakespeare (Penguin Classics)

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If you want your younger kids to read Shakespeare, then this is the kind of book you want to get. Some of the nuances of the writer are lost in this translation, but you get the basic idea of what the story is about.

I purchased this collection because I had heard for years about the Lamb family's adaptation of Shakespeare to make it more suitable for children. I have a two-year-old daughter who enjoys listening to both short stories and chapters from novels such as Stuart Little or The Tale of Despereaux, and even Harry Potter Paperback Box Set (Books 1-7), and I thought I would love to introduce her to the beauty of Shakespeare at an early age. Unfortunately, I underestimated the difficulty of Victorian English for such a young child. Furthermore, they may have omitted the truly bawdy tales (All's Well that Ends Well?), but who would read those to children any way? The first story, Macbeth, still included plenty of gore and violence, but really, it's Macbeth - how could you possibly convey the horror without the violence? Nevertheless, I feel like if I have to wait until my child is old enough to understand the complex language in this book, she'll probably be old enough by that point to tackle The Bard himself without the Lambs as middlemen. They may have provided a valuable service in their time, but I'm afraid it's obsolete now. In the mean time, we have been enjoying excerpts from Shakespeare in bite-sized pieces in Poetry for Young People: William Shakespeare, edited by David Scott and Marina Kastan. I still wish that I could find a great adaptation of Shakespeare for the elementary school set, but until then we'll retell the stories as best we can and enjoy the sound of the poetry in the Kastan's compilation.

I have read abridged versions of literature before but never in so short a form that it looses the flavor of the prose. This isn't even good for bed time stories for a 7 year old. I felt like the writer tried to merely state the facts of the stories rather than capture the theme, the plot and the characters in an interesting manner.

This is a beautifully crafted book. The jacket, the paper, the artwork are all of superior quality. Definitely a collectible-ish type of book. However, be warned: It is not the same Charles and Mary Lamb version as others! Those versions contain 20 abridged tales of Shakespeare's plays; this version only tells 6. I don't rightly remember all of them, but I know "Hamlet", "Midsummer Night's Dream", "Macbeth", and "Romeo and Juliet" were included.

If one is satisfied with just these tales, then I can tell you to buy this book. On the other hand, if you want all 20 tales (as I did), you are better off buying another version.

I must take issue with recommending this book for ages 8 and up. The language, although well-wrought, is now rather archaic and stilted. It is best for grades 7/8 thru adult, but more ideal for grades 10 thru adult. For a younger audience I suggest it as a read-aloud, in a highly literate family.

There are better books out there for grades 3-12. The younger set will do well with Bruce Coville's retellings of individual tales. The older should look to Ian Seraillier and E. Nesbit. And "Illustrated Tales from Shakespeare: A Modern Adaptation of the Charles and Mary Lamb Classic", illus. by Karel Toman, which contains 15 tales.

In this volume Charles and Mary Lamb turned 20 of Shakespeare's best loved plays into narratives for children , and it is a work of art in itself.
Written in 1807 , the stories are still easily readable and enjoyable 200 years later.
It is the ideal companion for one who finds Shakespeare hard to follow in the cold print of the play scripts but would like an easy and gentle introduction to his plays.
These stories are today read not only because they are an introduction to Shakespeare but they are the works of Charles Lamb and his sister.
The easy flow of Tales , the unity of style throughout , narrative sliding naturally into dialogue and dialogue into narrative , shows what talented authors the Lambs where.
Sub-plots and subsidiary inicidents and characters which give richness and variety to the plays on stage can confuse and mar the narratvies.

Thus they are often left out in the narratvies , leading a Shakespeare afficionado to perhaps be alarmed that the antics of Malvolio and the wit and pranks of Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek are left out of the Lamb narrative of Twelfth Night.
But if they where included they would have confused an already complicated story , one of mistaken indentity and familiar absurdity.

Charles Lamb gives his own ideas as to the sanity or lack thereof of Hamlet and often at the end of the comedies Mary Lamb writes of the characters living happily ever after , giving a longer time frame to the narratives than exisited in the plays.
This fresh infusion of the Lamb's own ideas and wisdom , made this a greater work than had they been mere critiques or precis of the plays themselves.

The Bard meets the Lambs. Charles and Mary Lamb wrote "Tales from Shakespeare" in 1807. The book retold twenty of the plays in prose being geared at children. Children who read the stories today would need to be very bright and advanced in their reading comprehension. Many of the sexual scenes and several of the subplots in these complex plays have been removed by Mary and Charles.
The Lambs were siblings who were plagued with mental problems throughout their sad lives. Mary stabbed her mother to death during an insane episode. The courts allowed her to live at home with her brother Charles who was a lowly clerk at the East India Office. Charles is famous for his essays though Mary wrote the majority of the play summaries in this classic book Mary wrote on 14 of the comedies and romances while Charles provided chapters on the tragedies of Hamlet, Othello, King Lear.
Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and Timon of Athens.
The book is short but essential in giving the reading a quick review of the plays. It is easy to get lost in the complex plots and the Elizabethan language and poetry in the plays. This book makes it easy to understand the basic plots and characters in the tales. The book is an introduction to Shakespeare; it no way is it designed to replace the plays; the purpose is to whet the desire to read and see Shakespeare acted on the stage.
Even veteran Shakespearians such as your reviewer found delight in this small book. I will turn to it often to refresh my memory of who is who and what is going on in the Shakespearean universe. The Lambs' book is essential reading.

Obviously, if you're an older reader well accustomed to the world of Shakespeare, this is NOT the book for you. These are "children" versions of Shakespeare plays. They're short, sweet, and a little simple, obviously. While they still have the same mature content as the plays, it feels more toned down.

You've got it all, really. Whatever Shakespeare play you love, you'll find it here, from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" to "Macbeth" and through "Hamlet". The stories are obviously the same, but the style is different. They feel a little like fairy tales, which is kind of the point. Children's stories, but of some of the greatest classics of all time.

These stories are fun to read, but don't think they're superb literature. They are a good way to spend an afternoon, but for older readers, the plays are still the way to go. This is better for older children and preteens who aren't quite ready to read Shakespeare himself, but can understand the stories themselves. I recommend it, but don't expect something incredible.

About a year ago, I started buying up audiobooks to listen to. I am a long-haul truck driver and wanted to have something interesting to make the miles go by faster and hopefully learn something useful in the process. Most of what I got were worthless - boring and dry as last year's bird nest, or too complicated and detailed to understand. Not so with this one though, and I can't say enough good things about it. The preface says it is for very young children, but they are selling the book short when they say that. Most adults could learn a lot from this book, and in my case, more than they learned in high school or college literature. When you read Shakespeare in the original language like they do in school, you get too bogged down with all the tedium of deciphering the ancient plays and trying to figure out what's going on. Not so with this version "for children" as they say, and now I can finally see why the guy was so famous. This audiobook has 20 UNDERSTANDABLE stories and by the time you get through them you will see what a genius he was, in the scenarios he could dream up and the devotion, love, and courage of the people in them. The 20 stories are suspenseful enough to keep you interested but also inspirational. Why didn't I have this book in my school years?

When I first began homeschooling my children I came across this book. Since we were to soon see a high school production of Midsummer's Night Dream I read the Lamb version aloud to them before seeing the performance. The results were amazing. My children had no previous exposure to Shakespeare. The Lamb's ability to retain some of Shakespeare's original language greatly enhanced their comprehension. They loved the story and we able to follow the play with ease, laughing and clearly enjoying themselves much to the frustration of some nearby adults who were completely lost. This book helped begin their love affair with Sir William. I am of the opinion reading a well summarized version of his plays and then watching a well done performance will make any child appreciate the genius that is Shakespeare's work.

This is a beautiful edition. However, I was very disappointed to find that there were only six stories included, as my library's catalog listed the same summary as the other versions of the book. So, for those wondering, this volume includes:
MACBETH
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
OTHELLO
HAMLET
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
KING LEAR

This version, with illustrations by Joelle Jolivet, does not include the full contents of other editions of Lamb's Shakespeare.
It only includes Macbeth, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Othello, Hamlet, Much Ado about Nothing, and King Lear. Anyone looking for more should check out a different version.

As a younger person in the nineties, I dipped into the plays of Shakespeare, and this book let me get into the classic stuff. It was interesting, put into kids' stories so as not to intimidate the younger enthusiast, and altogether, it was a good book. I suppose you have to be in to Shakespeare to enjoy it wholly though....
A gentle, relaxing dip into Shakespeare. I'll give two stars.

Boring for the adult, utterly inaccesible to the young reader.
Note that this book was written in 1807. If your goal is to expand your child's vocabulary, especially in the direction of archaisms, this might be a useful study text. If your goal is to teach your child to love literature and theatre, this could deal a ... blow to the effort.