Customer Reviews

Tales From Shakespeare Student Edition Complete And Unabridged

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4 star:		(3)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

I wish I had known of this book back in school! It explains difficult English plays :) Recommend for junior high and up to adult!

If your child needs this book for school, get the small paperback version by Signet Classics. I did not realize when I ordered this that the book is large, almost 10" by 8" which is difficult to fit in her tightly packed backpack.

This book was great for my 6th grader. It was written in a way that did not bore him to death and there were just enough pictures to keep him interested.

This is an excellent summary of the stories in Shakespeare plays. Well told and with most of the important details included. Thus, after reading this work one can intelligently understand, and even discuss, Shakespeare works although without reference to the marvelous phrasing of the original.

However, there are some caveats to be aware of. The original work was written around the turn of the last century, and thus its sentence structure, vocabulary, and presentation may appear stilted and unusual to some modern readers. Because the book was ostensibly written for children there is a considerable amount of generalization and "glossing over" of the more unpleasant details in the plays, particularly the six tragedies. Motives are assigned to characters that may or may not have been those Shakespeare had in mind. Characters of importance, but not in keeping with the core of the plot, are frequently excluded. For example, in the Lamb's presentation of Hamlet no mention is made of the Norwegian prince Fortinbras who in Shakespeare's play comes to claim the country after the final spate of deaths, and delivers the final lines of the play starting with "Bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage".

Even recognizing its shortcomings this is a work that captures both the content and tone of Shakespeare plays with most of their detail, and itself makes quite interesting reading, albeit without the outstanding "turn of the phase" that we associate with the Shakespeare originals. A work that is easy to recommend, in spite of its minor shortcomings.

For students of Shakespeare, particularly middle school, reading the stories based on 13 of Shakespeare's plays, is a useful tool. Granted, some of the language sounds stilted by today's ear, but it is more accessible than the plays for those unschooled in Elizabethen English.

I'm sure the content of this book is wonderful. However, buyers must be aware that this is a print on-demand product. The book is printed w/o a table of contents, no author info, no page breaks between tales - a complete waste of paper. It is advertised as "beautifully produced" and "would make an ideal gift" - both of which are not true. I see that there are other versions of this same book with the same problem. If you want a real book, do some research before buying this title.