Tales from Shakespeare

December 18, 2020 1:54 PM

Tales from Shakespeare by Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb: "The following Tales are meant to be submitted to the young reader as an introduction to the study of Shakespeare, for which purpose his words are used whenever it seemed possible to bring them in; and in whatever has been added to give them the regular form of a connected story, diligent care has been taken to select such words as might least interrupt the effect of the beautiful English tongue in which he wrote: therefore, words introduced into our language since his time have been as far as possible avoided."
posted by jim in austin (12 comments total)

Perfectly charming!

I must admit, my editing hand was twitching a little because I think most modern readers would prefer even a bit more brevity. But ‘tis enough; ‘twill serve.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:32 PM on December 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

We had a copy of this when I was little! I don't know when it came to us. All I remember is that I wanted to read Shakespeare and took it down, then felt confused because I was sure that Shakespeare wrote plays. I don't think I got very far, but I liked the pictures.
posted by Countess Elena at 2:41 PM on December 18, 2020 [3 favorites]

I regularly teach their version of Hamlet, usually along with Edith Nesbit's version in Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare (aimed at slightly younger readers, and clearly owing a lot to the Lambs). The insertions and deletions are both interesting--the Lambs make Hamlet very sorry for offing Polonius and carefully keep Rosencrantz and Guildenstern unnamed (all the better to dispatch them unapologetically), while Nesbit turns the whole play into a lesson on procrastination (a rather drastic lesson, to be sure).

Mary Cowden Clarke's short-story collection The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines is also worth dipping into; she was a Shakespeare scholar in her own right and well-connected in nineteenth-century literary circles (including with the Lambs).
posted by thomas j wise at 2:51 PM on December 18, 2020 [7 favorites]

This was my first Shakespeare, before I was able to start grappling with the original.
posted by gauche at 4:42 PM on December 18, 2020 [3 favorites]

I remember finding this in the library somewhere between fourth and fifth grade. I was entranced by the illustrations and read it cover to cover. (I can still smell that library! Dusty carpet and books and Xerox ink)

I remember the book fondly. It meant that when I started seeing the plays later, they already felt familiar. Oh, this is Hamlet-- that's Ophelia. I knew where I was with them, thanks partly to the Lambs' book.

(This next bit carries a content warning for murder and discussion of mental illness in the age before meds and therapy)

.

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Later on, co-writing a play set in Bedlam, I learnt about Mary Lamb's history. From this article in The Independent:

[...] It was the strain of [Mary's] life at this time, caring for a senile father, paralysed mother and elderly aunt, as well as carrying out her domestic duties on a limited budget, and training an apprentice, that led Mary suddenly to snap. One evening in September 1796, Mary became hysterical, and pursued her young apprentice round the room with a knife. Her mother intervened and was stabbed to death through the heart.

The good news is that Mary was not hanged or imprisoned. The verdict was temporary insanity, and she accepted the guardianship of her brother Charles and was released into his care. She was institutionalised for six months, and at times afterwards throughout her life; but for the greater part of their lives the two siblings lived together in various rented places. Mary had been a master mantua-maker, but could never again work at dressmaking, so they turned to writing collaboratively-- hence the "Tales From Shakespeare". It's worth noting that Charles is thought to have written the Tragedies, while Mary covered Comedies and Histories.

Luckily, they were successful enough as writers to stay financially solvent. They were also fortunate to have a circle of mutually supportive literary friends and colleagues, including Coleridge and the Wordsworths. Charles lived to 59, Mary into her 80s. By the time she died, few of her acquaintances and readers knew about her past.

Here's an essay written by Mary at 50, On Needle-Work, arguing that textile work is valuable and should be paid, and that women should not spend their leisure time doing needlework at home unpaid but should pay professionals to do it:

Is it too bold an attempt to persuade your readers that it would prove an incalculable addition to general happiness and the domestic comfort of both sexes, if needle-work were never practised but for a remuneration in money? As nearly, however, as this desirable thing can be effected, so much more nearly will woman be upon an equality with men as far as respects the mere enjoyment of life. [...]

If, at the birth of girls, it were possible to foresee in what cases it would be their fortune to pass a single life, we should soon find trades wrested from their present occupiers and transferred to the exclusive possession of our sex. [...] The parents of female children who were known to be destined from their birth to maintain themselves through the whole course of their lives with like certainty as their sons are, would feel it a duty incumbent on themselves to strengthen the minds, and even the bodily constitutions, of their girls so circumstanced, by an education which, without affronting the preconceived habits of society, might enable them to follow some occupation now considered above the capacity, or too robust for the constitution of our sex. Plenty of resources would then lie open for single women to obtain an independent livelihood [...]

posted by Pallas Athena at 5:00 PM on December 18, 2020 [20 favorites]

I actually picked up a recent hardcover reprint of this from Fall River Press (mostly for the Arthur Rackham art that served as illustrations accompanying the text)
posted by KingEdRa at 6:00 PM on December 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

When I was young -- at ten years old or less--
My folks had season tickets to the plays
The Folger put on stage in Washington;
We read the Lamb aloud the night before
We went to see the plays performèd live.
As opera's libretto supplements
My understanding of the when and how;
So, I who was the target audience
could learn to love the Bard from then to now.
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 1:30 AM on December 19, 2020 [7 favorites]

I ought to read these: I'm a Lamb fan already but only really know the essays & letters. Thanks for the post, jim in austin.

Further to Pallas Athena's comments above, it wasn't only the Lambs' literary work that sustained them - Charles also had an office day job for many years. On his retirement, he wrote:

If peradventure, Reader, it has been thy lot to waste the golden years of thy life—thy shining youth—in the irksome confinement of an office; to have thy prison days prolonged through middle age down to decrepitude and silver hairs, without hope of release or respite; to have lived to forget that there are such things as holidays, or to remember them but as the prerogatives of childhood; then, and then only, will you be able to appreciate my deliverance.

Charles comes across as an amiable sort, and was by all accounts the life and soul of the party, such as the one occasion when Wordsworth met Keats.

On the other hand, there's his essay 'Imperfect Sympathies,' in which he relates, in apparently descending order of antipathy, his prejudices toward the Scots, Jews, black people and Quakers:

I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair...

And so on... (though it has been claimed that the essay oughtn't be taken exactly at face value).
posted by misteraitch at 3:43 AM on December 19, 2020 [4 favorites]

I think I speak for all former used book store employees when I say I hate this book.
posted by HeroZero at 12:17 PM on December 19, 2020 [2 favorites]

Last summer I completed the final year of a BA in English. One module I took was entitled Shakespeare's Afterlives and involved consideration of the many ways in which the Bard's works live on in other forms: films, music, comic books, fiction and so on. One short assignment entailed creating a new and original 'afterlife' of one's own design, and after some head-scratching I produced this short piece of historical fiction about the Lambs and their relationship with the poet Coleridge which won me some praise and attention both from the course tutor and the external examiner. In fact it's a mere trifle, at best a sketch which should probably be rewritten, but I was so surprised and charmed by this post that I offer it for your general amusement and/or entertainment.
posted by Atom Collection at 1:10 PM on December 19, 2020 [3 favorites]

That was a great read, Atom Collection!
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:03 PM on December 19, 2020 [1 favorite]

*blushes* I'm glad you enjoyed it. Many thanks.
posted by Atom Collection at 3:00 PM on December 19, 2020