Shakespeare's Plays In Prose.

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Shakespeare's Plays In Prose.

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1skoobdo
jul 16, 2007, 1:48 am

Do you like to read Shakespeare's plays in story form ? Can you recommend any book titles and authors for the narrated Shakespeare's stories ?

2happeningfish Första inlägget
jul 16, 2007, 4:47 pm

For me, reading them in prose would be pretty much beside the point. You might as well go to Shakespeare's original source material and read those instead. :) Once I started to get a handle on the verse, I found I was looking at the notes less and less, and finally reading the plays becomes much more fluent. And then, after working on lots of the text in-depth as an actor, I've come to look more closely at the poetic tricks and games he plays in the text as imparting meaning, not just as something to do. So for me, unless I'm reading the original stuff, I'm not getting the full deal.

Having said that, the famous number is probably Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lambs. Available online at http://shakespeare.palomar.edu/lambtales/LAMBTALE.HTM

IMHO, those are great if you're just starting to read Shakespeare and you use them to get a clear handle on the plot before diving into the play itself, or if you need to explain it much faster than 1000 lines of verse!

3thecardiffgiant
aug 11, 2007, 8:01 pm

Tales from Shakespeare is intended for children. I picked up a great copy used for my nephews, though they're not quite ready for it yet.

Other than that, I'm not personally interested in adaptations or retellings.

4Cariola
aug 12, 2007, 11:58 am

That would be tantamount to reading the Cliff's Notes. All you will get is "what happens," and you'll be missing out on what really makes Shakespeare great, his mastery of words. As happenfish says above, reading the verse gets easier with practice. I teach Shakespeare, and I generally tell my students to read a scene through first without reading the footnotes. They generally get the drift of it and don't really need to know what a chopine is or what surfeit means to understand the basic plot. Then they can go back and check the notes.

If you really can't handle reading the original verse, I'd recommend you see some good live or video productions of the plays. Seeing what happens alongside hearing the verse makes it a bit easier to understand.

5jseger9000
okt 26, 2007, 9:39 am

I like SparkNotes No Fear Shakespeare myself.

These are little booklets that will have a page of the play on the left and on the right a page of modern day translation. (I think CliffsNotes has a similar thing called Shakespeare Made Easy.)

I read through Hamlet for my own enjoyment a few months ago. I discovered that for the most part you won't need the translation once you get the flow of his language. Nevertheless, there were times when knowing what they were saying in plain language helped me to understand the beauty of the way Shakespeare chose to phrase it.

As a solo reader who wasn't studying the play for a class or acting assignment, I don't think I would have been able to get through the play on my own without the side-by-side translation.

I think they only sell them at Barnes and Noble, but if you go to SparkNotes website, I believe you can check them out for free.