Bookmine: Beautiful Stories From Shakespeare

by Shakespeare

Genres: Classics

Synopsis

No-one can imagine English literature without Sir William Shakespeare, whose dramatic plays, sonnets and narrative poems have become timeless classics. Not only did he amass a cherished body of work, but four hundred years ago, he even invented many words in use in English now. A hundred years ago, children’s author, E.Nesbit felt that young readers, too, should enjoy Shakespeare’s writings. From Macbeth and The Merchant of Venice to Twelfth Night and King Lear, Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare brings together twenty tales from Shakespeare, retold in clear, simple prose. Nesbit makes the complex language of his greatest plays easy to enjoy, making her retellings the perfect introduction to Shakespeare’s masterly works. Plus! 32 Extra special pages from BookMine Gems. Know more about the authors, their works and times as well as things to think about and do!

Release date: March 12, 2012

Publisher: Hachette India

Print pages: 182

Sample

{Introduction}

Even as a child I loved the cadences of Shakespeare’s words, so I was in a bit of a quandary about what sort of introduction
to write to this book. On the one hand, I think it’s a laudable attempt to help familiarize people (in this case, young readers)
with the plays, but I wonder how much of their value remains once they are stripped of their language. I have never been one
for ‘abridged’ versions of Shakespeare and have always believed that to comprehend any great writing, the reader must also
make an effort and travel some distance.


While lauding Ms. E. Nesbit’s attempt to make Shakespeare accessible to all and appreciating the depth of her knowledge of
the works, I have to say that as a student, when having simultaneously read Julius Caesar in class, I was introduced to Lambs’ Tales from Shakespeare, I considered this synopsizing of some of the most exquisite language in English a severe shortchange. I continue to nurse reservations
about Shakespeare abridged, but I am not blind to the fact that in this technological era of instant gratification, it may
be necessary. Though, to my mind, that too is a double-edged sword. The impression left behind after reading Shakespeare abridged
could well be ‘Huh? What’s the big deal?’ In my opinion, the bard’s plot outlines are not the strongest area in his work;
some are utterly predictable, others are based on age-old fables; yet others are borrowed; they are hardly worth writing home
about. It’s the alchemy with words, of course, that makes Shakespeare what he is. I am not at all sure if simplifying Shakespeare’s
language will impel young readers to explore him further or make them abandon him altogether.


However, in the hope that ‘something is better than bilkul hi nothing’, students may just, on reading Ms. Nesbit’s adaptation, realize that his stories are not unlike Hindi films anyway,
and may shed to some extent their terror of Shakespeare’s language, even if they don’t actually begin to savour it.


My fervent hope, however, is that a reading of Ms. Nesbit’s caring ‘recreation in brief will impel students of literature to go ahead and plunge into the original without the fear that they are venturing into incomprehensible terrain
and with the knowledge that they are only listening to a cracking good story told, albeit in a style they are unfamiliar with,
but which asks the reader to also travel some distance in order to comprehend it.


Once that barrier is breached, the immortal cadences of Shakespeare’s words will not fail to mesmerize. But to get there requires
perhaps more effort and patience than many casual scholars are willing to give.


Basically, the more people are exposed to Shakespeare in whatever form, the better, and Ms. Nesbit’s loving effort will surely
go a long way to achieving that end. My gratitude to her for having undertaken this valiant (and perhaps thankless) task.


April 2010 Naseeruddin Shah



 

 

 

 

 

 

 



{Preface}

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 today 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 creations 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 moonlight 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.


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 in view of 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.


E.T.R.

Publisher’s Note: This volume includes all the sections of the original book by E. Nesbit, except ‘A Brief Life of Shakespeare’ introduced by the
then publisher. Details of William Shakespeare’s life are included in the ‘Author Report’ as well as other sections of The Book Mine Gems at the end of this volume.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



1

{A Midsummer Night’s Dream}

Hermia and Lysander were in love; but Hermia’s father wished her to marry another man, named Demetrius. Now, in Athens, where
they lived, there was a wicked law, by which any girl who refused to marry according to her father’s wishes, might be put
to death. Hermia’s father was so angry with her for refusing to do as he wished, that he actually brought her before the Duke
of Athens to ask that she might be killed, if she still refused to obey him. The Duke gave her four days to think about it,
and, at the end of that time, if she still refused to marry Demetrius, she would have to die.


Lysander of course was nearly mad with grief, and the best thing to do seemed to him for Hermia to run away to his aunt’s
house at a place beyond the reach of that cruel law; and there he would come to her and marry her. But before she started,
she told her friend, Helena, what she was going to do.


Helena had been Demetrius’ sweetheart long before his marriage with Hermia had been thought of, and being very silly, like
all jealous people, she could not see that it was not poor Hermia’s fault that Demetrius wished to marry her instead of his
own lady, Helena. She knew that if she told Demetrius that Hermia was going, as she was, to the wood outside Athens, he would
follow her, ‘and I can follow him, and at least I shall see him,’ she said to herself. So she went to him, and betrayed her
friend’s secret.


Now this wood where Lysander was to meet Hermia, and where the other two had decided to follow them, was full of fairies,
as most woods are, if one only had the eyes to see them, and in this wood on this night were the King and Queen of the fairies,
Oberon and Titania. Now fairies are very wise people, but now and then they can be quite as foolish as mortal folk. Oberon
and Titania, who might have been as happy as the days were long, had thrown away all their joy in a foolish quarrel. They
never met without saying disagreeable things to each other, and scolded each other so dreadfully that all their little fairy
followers, for fear, would creep into acorn cups and hide there.


So, instead of keeping one happy Court and dancing all night through in the moonlight as is fairies’ use, the King with his
attendants wandered through one part of the wood, while the Queen with hers kept state in another. And the cause of all this
trouble was a little Indian boy whom Titania had taken to be one of her followers. Oberon wanted the child to follow him and be one of his fairy knights; but the Queen would not give him up.


On this night, in a mossy moonlit glade, the King and Queen of the fairies met.

‘Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania,’ said the King.

‘What! jealous, Oberon?’ answered the Queen. ‘You spoil everything with your quarrelling. Come, fairies, let us leave him.
I am not friends with him now.’


‘It rests with you to make up the quarrel,’ said the King.

‘Give me that little Indian boy, and I will again be your humble servant and suitor.’

‘Set your mind at rest,’ said the Queen. ‘Your whole fairy kingdom buys not that boy from me. Come, fairies.’

And she and her train rode off down the moonbeams.

‘Well, go your ways,’ said Oberon. ‘But I’ll be even with you before you leave this wood.’

Then Oberon called his favourite fairy, Puck. Puck was the spirit of mischief. He used to slip into the dairies and take the
cream away, and get into the churn so that the butter would not come, and turn the beer sour, and lead people out of their
way on dark nights and then laugh at them, and tumble people’s stools from under them when they were going to sit down, and
upset their hot ale over their chins when they were going to drink.


‘Now,’ said Oberon to this little sprite, ‘fetch me the flower called Love-in-idleness. The juice of that little purple flower
laid on the eyes of those who sleep will make them, when they wake, to love the first thing they see. I will put some of the juice of that flower on my Titania’s eyes, and when she
wakes she will love the first thing she sees, were it lion, bear, or wolf, or bull, or meddling monkey, or a busy ape.’


While Puck was gone, Demetrius passed through the glade followed by poor Helena, and still she told him how she loved him
and reminded him of all his promises, and still he told her that he did not and could not love her, and that his promises
were nothing. Oberon was sorry for poor Helena, and when Puck returned with the flower, he bade him follow Demetrius and put
some of the juice on his eyes, so that he might love Helena when he woke and looked on her, as much as she loved him. So Puck
set off, and wandering through the wood found, not Demetrius, but Lysander, on whose eyes he put the juice; but when Lysander
woke, he saw not his own Hermia, but Helena, who was walking through the wood looking for the cruel Demetrius; and directly
he saw her he loved her and left his own lady, under the spell of the purple flower.


When Hermia woke she found Lysander gone, and wandered about the wood trying to find him. Puck went back and told Oberon what
he had done, and Oberon soon found that he had made a mistake, and set about looking for Demetrius, and having found him,
put some of the juice on his eyes.


And the first thing Demetrius saw when he woke was also Helena. So now Demetrius and Lysander were both following her through the wood, and it was Hermia’s turn to follow her lover as Helena had done before. The end of it was
that Helena and Hermia began to quarrel, and Demetrius and Lysander went off to fight. Oberon was very sorry to see his kind
scheme to help these lovers turn out so badly. So he said to Puck, ‘These two young men are going to fight. You must overhang
the night with drooping fog, and lead them so astray, that one will never find the other. When they are tired out, they will
fall asleep. Then drop this other herb on Lysander’s eyes. That will give him his old sight and his old love. Then each man
will have the lady who loves him, and they will all think that this has been only a Midsummer Night’s Dream. Then when this
is done, all will be well with them.’


So Puck went and did as he was told, and when the two had fallen asleep without meeting each other, Puck poured the juice
on Lysander’s eyes, and said:


‘When thou wakest,

Thou takest

True delight

In the sight

Of thy former lady’s eye:

Jack shall have Jill;

Nought shall go ill.’

Meanwhile Oberon found Titania asleep on a bank where grew wild thyme, oxlips, and violets, and woodbine, musk-roses and eglantine. There Titania always slept a part of the night, wrapped in the enamelled skin of a snake. Oberon
stooped over her and laid the juice on her eyes, saying:


‘What thou seest when thou wake,

Do it for thy true love take.’

Now, it happened that when Titania woke, the first thing she saw was a stupid clown, one of a party of players who had come
out into the wood to rehearse their play. This clown had met with Puck, who had clapped an ass’s head on his shoulders so
that it looked as if it grew there.


Directly Titania woke and saw this dreadful monster, she said, ‘What angel is this? Are you as wise as you . . .