Teaching with Tales from Shakespeare Elizabeth Haven Hawley

Teaching with Tales from Shakespeare Elizabeth Haven Hawley We transform lives through our work in heritage preservation. Global heritage collections are central ways of creating cohesiveness within and across cultures. They do this by challenging us to explore and articulate our commonalities and differences through the layered and competing narratives they expose. We express the complexity of our own times and lives through the richness of the documents and materials we create and sustain. And by looking critically at what is missing from those collections, we move beyond narrow identities to affirm a more vibrant social palette. We must be trained and train others to see human experience both through presence and absence in collections. We also need to find ways for the broader public to experience our holdings, directly as objects, indirectly through surrogates, and through shared transformation of the arrayed aspects that can Source: Charles and Mary Lamb, be found in even a single item. Tales from Shakespeare (Philadelphia: David McKay The world of Shakespeare was a period of Company, 1922). Images from transformation, restructuring the relationship of people book in author’s collection. to the land, the law, and to one another. I specialize in studying transitions -- the eras in which great changes occurred, but which at the time did not reveal clear paths forward. The history of technology is an essential aspect of studying Shakespeare’s world, as well as each era in which his works became key cultural resources. The 1922 edition of Tales from Shakespeare, by Charles and Mary Lamb, can show us the ways in which social and technological trajectories intersect and shape the forms in which we come into contact with Shakespeare. The 1922 edition is an emblem and evidence of how social practices intertwine with those of the material world and how we structure our work in it. What can be discerned with a little guidance, magnification, and the book itself? What is experienced differently in another form or through interaction with that form, whether it be the actual book or a dramatic performance? And to the point: when must this specific object be used rather than any other form or substitution? A research library encompasses a remarkable range of conversations between the many pasts and our complex present. We need to be up to our promise of providing 1 opportunities for engagement with books in the future, both documenting our engagement, now, and preserving opportunities beyond our use, for the future. I say this as someone who loves books but who also is wary of the tendency to make an altar to or out of them. Having worked in the printing industry, I have been maker and destroyers of their bodies. As reader, scholar, teacher, librarian, I have learned that each interaction leaves a mark. Let us make those marks mean something with our careful work together. Brief Publishing History Frontispiece The English essayist Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb, his sister, wrote shortened and selected prose versions of twenty plays as a means of introducing children to dramatic works through prose. First published in London in 1807, Tales from Shakespeare rode a wave of interest in Shakespeare adaptations that brought aspects of the Bard’s writing in line with each era’s preferences. Tales has been frequently republished, with particular intensity in London and major American cities. A comprehensive listing of the entirety of its publication history would be daunting to attempt. In addition to the English-language versions more commonly known, Tales also introduced adults and non-English speakers to his works. We find Yiddish versions in the United States about a century after the work’s first publication. Translation into Korean in the early 20th century paved the way for appreciation of full-text materials in that country. Though facilitated by Japanese interest in Shakespeare, Korean readings of Shakespeare have long expressed nuances of political protest, both during Japanese occupation and more recent political suppression. The publishing diversity reflects the spread of Shakespeare’s works into and across cultures as a means of validating or expressing opposition to political power. The Lambs’ work is a prime example of Anglo-American publications for introducing children to Shakespeare in the 19th century. Mary wrote fourteen adaptations of plays into prose, taking charge of the comedies. Her brother Charles prepared six of the tales, including plays such as King Lear, Macbeth, and Hamlet. They both contributed to the preface, although Charles attributed the majority of it to Mary. Charles, becoming known through his work as an essayist, was the only author noted on the title page until the late 1830s, a few years after his death. To their joint effort, Charles brought a belief that prose better conveyed nuance than performance of drama. The stage favored force, rather than intimacy. The subtler aspects of 2 conveying love could be better appreciated in prose Title page and, perhaps, by individual rather than community experience. Mary offered a somewhat more mechanical point of view. She emphasized the value of love, but more so as it intersected with propriety and expressions of gendered norms of the day. Their adaptations followed expectations that children’s reading in the 19th century would inculcate morality, reward of diligence, loyalty, and virtue. Shakespeare, then, would seem a choice somewhat at odds with their aims for children’s literature. Yet they followed a long tradition of reinterpreting scripts into other types of text and the revising, rewriting, and cutting of unpopular aspects in order to make their work resonate with their society. In a similar vein, though Mary was the main writer and proponent of its commission, the book remained under her brother’s name until after his death. Mary’s unfortunate history of mental illness and her murder of their mother made Charles a mentor and protector – as well as necessary public face for their work. The Lambs exercised editorial license to make works suitable for children, expressing belief that the “great pleasures” of the works would be experienced as an adult readily after a taste had been acquired during childhood. Compaction and simplification, along with the guidance of more knowledgeable brothers who could select appropriate reading from full copies of plays, would help little girls to take part in a world shaped by Shakespeare. It seems the Lambs modeled their expectations upon their own close relationship, producing a work that replicated their personal experiences. While using as much of Shakespeare’s vocabulary as possible for material they crafted, Mary and Charles trimmed and omitted sections that did not fit into a child’s upright education. Mary’s goal of promoting contemporary middle-class Christian morality and social relations was clear, for instance, in Merchant of Venice. She suppressed the important “hath not a Jew eyes” soliloquy and minimized the marriage of Shylock’s daughter to a Christian. Her work perpetuated the least generous interpretations of Shylock’s character. She removed the suitor competition, directing readers into conceptualizing a love-match rather than a test of a daughter’s loyalty to her father. Her editing created an implicit critique of capitalism, just as the United States was establishing market capitalism, turning tillers of the land toward workshop and then factory labor. In Mary’s adaptation, Portia served both as obedient wife, accepting a husband’s complete control over her wealth and person, and as chief advocate in a legal proceeding on behalf of her husband’s best friend. Her role was to submit to 3 Headpiece to preface nature’s hierarchy, only acting outside of that role when called to defend the interests of one who ruled her. Tales from Shakespeare can be considered a best seller. In the United States, high literacy rates and an emphasis on education essential to participating in civic life provided a perfect environment for the book’s popularity. Reading supported learning God’s word in colonial times, shaping perceptions of Elizabeth Shippen Green, self portrait Shakespeare as literature. Increasing study of Shakespeare and public performance of works in the 19th century stimulated more interest. From crude popular culture to finding a classical past in time for the centennial of the country, Shakespeare infiltrated American public life and growing individualized spaces for middle and upper classes. For these among other reasons, we find numerous US imprints. While invariably reprinting the original preface, these new editions reset type, offered decorative bindings, or added plays or exchanged older illustrations for new, to peak the interest of customers. 4 Mary Lamb considered the illustrations that Mary Godwin selected for the 1807 edition not as tasteful and educational as the text deserved. Over the next century, both unnamed and well known artists such as Arthur Rackham illustrated editions of the work. Highly successful during her own time, Elizabeth Shippen Green Elliot illustrated the 1922 edition. Elizabeth Shippen Green, also later taking Elliott as her married name, created art evoking idealized domesticity at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. During this Golden Age of Illustration, her lush, colorful art took full advantage of advances in color printing. She formed an enduring social and professional partnership with Violet Oakley and Jessie Willcox Smith. Their output carved out a successful occupational space by focusing on topics considered a women’s domain, such as children and home life. Green succeeded in making a career of producing artwork for advertising, popular magazines, and children’s books. Smith’s photographic work sometimes provided models from which Green sketched her images of children and women, which printers turned into halftone images to make printable. Separates plates for each color could be arranged carefully and printed in sequence to achieve prints strikingly Illustration for “Merchant of Venice” similar to her original art.

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