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Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare |
by Edith Nesbit |
Twenty stories from Shakespeare retold in lively prose. The author makes the complex language of Shakespeare's greatest plays accessible to young children by relating the stories that form the core of the plays. Her graceful, vivid retellings are the perfect introduction to Shakespeare's works. Ages 9-12 | 262 pages |
$11.95 |
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Front Matter
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
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PREFACE
[3] The writings of Shakespeare have been justly termed "the richest,
the purest, the fairest, that genius uninspired ever penned."
Shakespeare instructed by delighting. His plays alone (leaving
mere science out of the question), contain more actual wisdom than
the whole body of English learning. He is the teacher of all
good— pity, generosity, true courage, love. His bright wit is
cut out "into little stars." His solid masses of knowledge are
meted out in morsels and proverbs, and thus distributed, there is
scarcely a corner of the English-speaking world to-day which he
does not illuminate, or a cottage which he does not enrich. His
bounty is like the sea, which, though often unacknowledged, is
everywhere felt. As his friend, Ben Jonson, wrote of him, "He
was not of an age but for all time." He ever kept the highroad
of human life whereon all travel. He did not pick out by-paths
of feeling and sentiment. In his
cre- [4] ations we have no moral
highwaymen, sentimental thieves, interesting villains, and amiable,
elegant adventuresses—no delicate entanglements of situation, in
which the grossest images are presented to the mind disguised
under the superficial attraction of style and sentiment. He
flattered no bad passion, disguised no vice in the garb of virtue,
trifled with no just and generous principle. While causing us to
laugh at folly, and shudder at crime, he still preserves our love
for our fellow-beings, and our reverence for ourselves.
Shakespeare was familiar with all beautiful forms and images, with
all that is sweet or majestic in the simple aspects of nature, of
that indestructible love of flowers and fragrance, and dews, and
clear waters—and soft airs and sounds, and bright skies and
woodland solitudes, and moon-light bowers, which are the material
elements of poetry,—and with that fine sense of their indefinable
relation to mental emotion, which is its essence and vivifying
soul—and which, in the midst of his most busy and tragical scenes,
falls like gleams of sunshine on rocks and ruins—contrasting with
all that is rugged or repulsive, and reminding us of the existence
of purer and brighter elements.
[5] These things considered, what wonder is it that the works of
Shakespeare, next to the Bible, are the most highly esteemed of
all the classics of English literature. "So extensively have the
characters of Shakespeare been drawn upon by artists, poets, and
writers of fiction," says an American author,—"So interwoven are
these characters in the great body of English literature, that to
be ignorant of the plot of these dramas is often a cause of
embarrassment."
But Shakespeare wrote for grown-up people, for men and women, and
in words that little folks cannot understand.
Hence this volume. To reproduce the entertaining stories contained
in the plays of Shakespeare, in a form so simple that children
can understand and enjoy them, was the object had in view by the
author of these Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare.
And that the youngest readers may not stumble in pronouncing any
unfamiliar names to be met with in the stories, the editor has
prepared and included in the volume a Pronouncing Vocabulary of
Difficult Names. To which is added a collection of Shakespearean
Quotations, classified in alphabetical order, illustrative of the
wisdom and genius of the world's greatest dramatist.
A BRIEF LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE
[7] In the register of baptisms of the parish church of Stratford-upon-Avon,
a market town in Warwickshire, England, appears, under date of
April 26, 1564, the entry of the baptism of William, the son of
John Shakspeare. The entry is in Latin—"Gulielmus filius Johannis
Shakspeare."
The date of William Shakespeare's birth has usually been taken as
three days before his baptism, but there is certainly no evidence
of this fact.
The family name was variously spelled, the dramatist himself not
always spelling it in the same way. While in the baptismal record
the name is spelled "Shakspeare," in several authentic autographs
of the dramatist it reads "Shakspere," and in the first edition
of his works it is printed "Shakespeare."
Halliwell tells us, that there are not less than thirty-four ways
in which the various members of the Shakespeare family wrote the
name, and in the council-book of the
cor- [8] poration of Stratford,
where it is introduced one hundred and sixty-six times during the
period that the dramatist's father was a member of the municipal
body, there are fourteen different spellings. The modern
"Shakespeare" is not among them.
Shakespeare's father, while an alderman at Stratford, appears to
have been unable to write his name, but as at that time nine men
out of ten were content to make their mark for a signature, the
fact is not specially to his discredit.
The traditions and other sources of information about the occupation
of Shakespeare's father differ. He is described as a butcher, a
woolstapler, and a glover, and it is not impossible that he may
have been all of these simultaneously or at different times, or
that if he could not properly be called any one of them, the nature
of his occupation was such as to make it easy to understand how
the various traditions sprang up. He was a landed proprietor and
cultivator of his own land even before his marriage, and he received
with his wife, who was Mary Arden, daughter of a country gentleman,
the estate of Asbies, 56 acres in extent. William was the third
child. The two older than he were daughters, and both probably
died in infancy. After him
[9] were
born three sons and a daughter.
For ten or twelve years at least, after Shakespeare's birth his
father continued to be in easy circumstances. In the year 1568
he was the high bailiff or chief magistrate of Stratford, and for
many years afterwards he held the position of alderman as he had
done for three years before. To the completion of his tenth year,
therefore, it is natural to suppose that William Shakespeare would
get the best education that Stratford could afford. The free
school of the town was open to all boys, and like all the
grammar-schools of that time, was under the direction of men who,
as graduates of the universities, were qualified to diffuse that
sound scholarship which was once the boast of England. There is
no record of Shakespeare's having been at this school, but there
can be no rational doubt that he was educated there. His father
could not have procured for him a better education anywhere. To
those who have studied Shakespeare's works without being influenced
by the old traditional theory that he had received a very narrow
education, they abound with evidences that he must have been
solidly grounded in the learning, properly so called,
taught
in the grammar schools.
There are local associations connected with Stratford
[10] which could
not be without their influence in the formation of young Shakespeare's
mind. Within the range of such a boy's curiosity were the fine
old historic towns of Warwick and Coventry, the sumptuous palace
of Kenilworth, the grand monastic remains of Evesham. His own
Avon abounded with spots of singular beauty, quiet hamlets, solitary
woods. Nor was Stratford shut out from the general world, as many
country towns are. It was a great highway, and dealers with every
variety of merchandise resorted to its markets. The eyes of the
poet dramatist must always have been open for observation. But
nothing is known positively of Shakespeare from his birth to his
marriage to Anne Hathaway in 1582, and from that date nothing but
the birth of three children until we find him an actor in London
about 1589.
How long acting continued to be Shakespeare's sole profession we
have no means of knowing, but it is in the highest degree probable
that very soon after arriving in London he began that work of
adaptation by which he is known to have begun his literary career.
To improve and alter older plays not up to the standard that was
required at the time was a common practice even among the best
dramatists
[11] of the day, and Shakespeare's abilities would speedily
mark him out as eminently fitted for this kind of work. When the
alterations in plays originally composed by other writers became
very extensive, the work of adaptation would become in reality a
work of creation. And this is exactly what we have examples of
in a few of Shakespeare's early works, which are known to have
been founded on older plays.
It is unnecessary here to extol the published works of the world's
greatest dramatist. Criticism has been exhausted upon them, and
the finest minds of England, Germany, and America have devoted
their powers to an elucidation of their worth.
Shakespeare died at Stratford on the 23d of April, 1616. His
father had died before him, in 1602, and his mother in 1608. His
wife survived him till August, 1623. His son Hamnet died in 1596
at the age of eleven years. His two daughters survived him, the
eldest of whom, Susanna, had, in 1607, married a physician of
Stratford, Dr. Hall. The only issue of this marriage, a daughter
named Elizabeth, born in 1608, married first Thomas Nasbe, and
afterwards Sir John Barnard, but left no children by either
marriage.
[12] Shakespeare's younger daughter, Judith, on the 10th of
February, 1616, married a Stratford gentleman named Thomas Quincy,
by whom she had three sons, all of whom died, however, without
issue. There are thus no direct descendants of Shakespeare.
Shakespeare's fellow-actors, fellow-dramatists, and those who knew
him in other ways, agree in expressing not only admiration of his
genius, but their respect and love for the man. Ben Jonson said,
"I love the man, and do honor his memory, on this side idolatry,
as much as any. He was indeed honest, and of an open and free
nature." He was buried on the second day after his death, on the
north side of the chancel of Stratford church. Over his grave
there is a flat stone with this inscription, said to have been
written by himself:
Good friend for Jesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased heare:
Blest be ye man yt spares these stones,
And curst be he yt moves my bones.
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