Tales from Shakespeare

Tina Packer (retold by)

Various illustrators

Scholastic Press, USA: 2004; 192pp

ISBN: 0439321077

Note: extension vocabulary

Genres: drama, literature

Tina Packer is the President and Artistic Director of Shakespeare & Company, a critically acclaimed theatre and theatre-education group she founded in Lennox, Massachusetts, in 1978. Ten of the great plays are retold in a quite formal style, reflecting the Bard's language and sometimes quoting excerpts from relevant speeches.

 In addition, the reader is given a clear idea of the actions that accompany the events of the story and the physical appearance of most characters.

Although this results in occasionally stilted language, it is an excellent way to introduce the inexperienced viewer to the plot of each play, as well as giving them insight into what they might expect to see on stage. This would be of great help to students approaching Shakespeare for the first time, or for teachers who want to make sure their class has a clear understanding of plot and action before beginning to study the script itself. Each of the stories is introduced by a full-page illustration in a style appropriate to the mood and events of the play. There is also a clear and concise introduction that outlines Shakespeare's life and times and the role of the theatre in the Elizabethan world. More significantly it gives the reader insight into some of the ‘universal truths' underlying the plays and which are the reason they are still performed to packed audiences some four hundred years after his death.

Stories from A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, Macbeth, The Tempest, Othello, As You Like It, Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, King Lear.