Rating: WORTHY!
This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.
This was a well-written and easy introduction to Shakespeare for young readers, providing a short story version of a dozen plays. Note that it pulls no punches, telling the stories as Shakespeare wrote them, so there's no hiding the murder, intrigue, and double-cross - and there's a lot of it, for fully half of these plays are the tragedies, the other half the comedies. There are none from the 'histories'. Overall, I think this worked well and it strikes me as a great way to get your kids interested in a highly enduring and popular writer.
The book didn't offer anything aside from the plays - apart from a few illustrations by Alice Lindstrom, which I personally could have done without because I did not feel they contributed anything beyond padding. I'd rather have seen some information or commentary added, and there was a small section at the back with a short paragraph on each included play which gave some background details, but it was very brief.
The plays do not appear to be in any kind of order that I could see. For example, Romeo and Juliet was written before Macbeth, yet they're the first two plays and in the opposite chronological order. The plays are these:
- The Tragedy of Macbeth is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy. It's sourced from the Holinshed's Chronicles published a decade or two earlier and influenced by the 1590 witch trials in Scotland. It begins with MacBeth coming home from battle to be accosted by three witches who tell him he will become king, while his companion Banquo will be the father of kings but never king himself. In many ways it's just a rejiggered version of Hamlet. MacBeth, rather than wait for fate to crown him decides to hasten things along. He murders King Duncan, leaving 'evidence' that lays the blame on the king's guards (who had been drugged by Macbeth's wife). Fearing the blame trail would lead to them, Duncan's two sons flee, and MacBeth is crowned king, but like Hamlet, he can't overcome his fears and doubts and this leads to a downhill trail of guilt, suspicion, murder, and discovery. The play was essentially a paean to King James and was evidently written (or at least amended) in the aftermath of The Gunpowder Plot of 1605.
- Romeo and Juliet which ought to need no introduction, is an early play of Shakespeare's once again ripped-off from an Italian precursor as so many of his works seem to be! The story of Mariotto and Gianozza by Masuccio Salernitano is the source, later adapted as Giulietta e Romeo and containing the entire story as Shakespeare appropriated it. The warring family names are perhaps from Dante's Divine Comedy: Montecchi and Cappelletti. It also has parallels in Pyramus and Thisbe which was a play featured in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream also included in this collection.
- The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark popularly known as just 'Hamlet' is a play that exists in three different versions, having evidently been re-written by Shakespeare several times. Set in Denmark, it tells the story of a young prince set on a course of revenge by his father's ghost, who claims he was murdered by his brother, who now happens to be married to Hamlet's mom, and is king. You know, no one ever explained to me how that worked. Didn't the crown pass from father to son? Why is the uncle the king and not Hamlet? This was written during the reign of Elizabeth the first, and she was queen in her own right, so maybe Hamlet's mom was queen in her own right? This is one of Shakespeare's plays where everyone dies. He seemed to enjoy writing those. As with all his other works, he ripped off this idea directly from the Scandinavian story of Amleth.
- A Midsummer Night's Dream is a fluffy nonsensical story of mixed loves and confusion written around the same time as Much Ado About Nothing. I much prefer the latter. This play is one of Shakespeare's earliest and the opening lines perhaps wisely invite the observer to pretend it's only a dream if they don't like it. Helena is in love with Demetrius who loves Hermia who loves Lysander, but Hermia's father wishes her to marry Ron Weasely...er, Demetrius. Sorry! All this is worked out in the end by Robin Goodfellow aka 'Puck' and his magic potion. Meanwhile a troop of players are practicing a play (Pyramus and Thisbe) which they hope to put on at the Duke's wedding. One particularly self-opinionated player named Bottom becomes the object of Puck's self-amusement as his features become those of an ass (Bottom, ass - get it? Shakespeare was not known for subtlety!). Following Fairy King Oberon's earlier instructions, Puck makes Queen Titania fall in love with this ass. This is one of Shakespeare's few plays which he did not rip-off from some other source.
- The Tempest is thought to be the last play Shakespeare wrote and sees him once again returning to the magical as a once again an exiled Duke (cf As You Like It!) gains a belated revenge - of a sort. There is no single source that Shakespeare used for this one, so it's more like his own work for a change.
- Twelfth Night, or What You Will. Ripped-off from yet another Italian source (The Deceived Ones), this is a comedy once again featuring twins as in The Comedy of Errors which features two sets. Shakespeare himself was the father of twins: Hamnet who died as a child, and Judith who lived to a ripe old age. In the case of this play the twins are Viola and Sebastian, who become separated when their ship wrecks. Thinking her brother has died and hoping for a better life as a man, she takes her brother's male identity, but calls herself Cesario, and becomes a trusted confidante and companion of Duke Orsino, while at the same time falling for him. Meanwhile, thinking his sister dead, her brother starts life anew and ends up encountering her accidentally, but not before confusion has been set in motion as Orsini sends Cesario to court Olivia, who of course has no interest in Orsino, but who falls for Cesario. So once again we get the same old Shakespeare routines we've seen so many times before. As it happens I like this play and it is, methinks, my favorite along with Much Ado About Nothing.
- The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice is a direct rip-off of Un Capitano Moro, aka A Moorish Captain by Cinthio, and from which the name Desdemona was taken directly. The trouble-making Iago, who is the Don John of this story, feeds poisonous untruths to his boss, Othello, who had failed to promote Iago in his military unit. Iago sets his boss against his wife and eventually causes Othello to suffocate his wife and then upon learning too late of her innocence, kill himself.
- As You Like It is believed to have been written in 1599 and tells the story of Shakespeare's famous Rosalind (Romeo's soon-ditched 'undying live') and her cousin Celia, who flee her cruel uncle's court and move into the Forest of Arden where others are also in exile. Arden, situated in almost the geographical center of England (not far from where I am from!), is now no longer a forest worth the name. The story is somewhat confused because while Arden is in England, the play is set in France, yet the Forest of the Ardennes lies in Belgium and Luxembourg! Shakespeare was very confused! He was one of history's most famous rip-off artists. If he were writing today he'd be doing young adult trilogies galore. He took this tale from the source story for what later became known as The Tale of Gamelyn.
- The Tragedy of Julius Caesar was written around the same time as As You Like It and Hamlet and despite its title, is really more about Brutus and his plot to assassinate Caesar, whom he thought was bad for Rome, but really, would you want to see a play named 'Brutus' when you could see one named 'Julius Caesar'? I think people would rather see a play named 'Popeye' than one named 'Brutus'! Shakespeare took his story from Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's 'Lives' retaining many folk tales that had no historical provenance (such as the 'Et Tu Brute' line, which Caesar never said) as well as compressing events for the sake or performing them on a small stage.
- Much Ado About Nothing! I read somewhere that in Shakespeare's time that last word in the title would have been read as 'noting' and therefore was a double entendre. If you take note, you'll notice that the importance of being noted, or of failing to take note, is at the forefront of this play. Beatrice makes mention of marking (i.e. paying attention to) something in her exchange with Benedick, and shortly thereafter, Claudio and he make mention of noting Hero. Written roughly around the same time as A Midsummer Night's Dream, this play was perhaps taken from Orlando Furioso (Furious Orlando) by Ludovico Ariosto and from Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene. In a sense it's very much like Midsummer Night's Dream in that there's a meddlesome interloper and mistaken identity. In this case the meddler is Don John, Don Pedro's evil brother. The absurdly-named Hero is besmirched by trickery and the original 'fighting couple who fall in love' (Benedick and Beatrice), which is such a staple of cheaply-written modern romances, begin at odds and even fall in love here.
- King Lear is another tragedy taken from semi-historical sources about the ancient English character known as Leir, and he also took the character of Cordelia from Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene. The tragic ending was displeasing to so many that an alternative happy ending was later used - and for many years before the original was restored to favor. Shakespeare's play appeared about a decade after a comedy written about this same king who was believed to have reigned in the eighth century BC.
- The Most Excellent Historie of the Merchant of Venice dates to the end of the sixteenth century and is considered a comedy, but with high dramatic content. It's a direct rip-off of Il Pecorone by Giovanni Fiorentino. Pecorone is an Italian word related to sheep (pecora), not to be confused with Percorino which is a type of cheese made from sheep's milk; so the meaning here is someone who is weak willed or easily led and no doubt refers to Antonio being sorely abused by Bassanio. Bassanio is a dilettante and profligate who wants Portia, and who persuades Antonio to loan him 3,000 ducats to spend on pursuing her. Antonio has no liquid assets at that moment so he secures a loan from Shylock - the one and original, but because of his racist remarks, Shylock forces him into a deal whereby Shylock will get neither money nor goods if Antonio defaults. Instead, he will get a pound of Antonio's flesh from around his heart! Bassanio correctly chooses the casket from three which Portia offers, only one of which contains her picture, and so gets her hand, but if it were that simple why does he need 3,000 ducats?! Anyway, Antonio's ships flounder and Shylock calls in his loan! Fortunately, Antonio is saved by the skin of his teeth when Portia and Nerissa in disguise as a male lawyer and 'his' clerk bale Antonio out.
Is this a blank page I see before me? Out, out damned text! I ran into a couple of issues with this advance review copy. The most serious of these was a problem - in two different downloads of this book - in that p82 (the last page of As You Like It), and also pps 98, 99 (in Much Ado About Nothing) were all completely blank - no text at all! I assume this will be fixed before the final copy is published. This was viewing the PDF format file in Bluefire Reader on an iPad.
Double, double, toil and trouble! The other issue was more of an annoyance in that the pages are presented as double-pages, meaning you have to tip your tablet over to landscape view to read them - and therefore at a smaller magnification than you'd be able to if they were presented as individual pages you could read in portrait view. To me this was an annoyance and a sign of yet another book being conceived as a print book and suffering for that in the ebook version. You definitely don't want to try reading this on your smart phone! Not smart!
Other than that I enjoyed these very much and I commend this collection as a worthy introduction for youngsters new to Shakespeare.
