Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare

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Standard Ebooks is a volunteer-driven project that produces ebook editions of public domain literature using modern typography, technology, and editorial standards, and distributes them free of cost. You can download this and other ebooks carefully produced for true book lovers at standardebooks.org. Epigraph “It may be said of Shakespeare, that from his works may be collected a system of civil and economical prudence. He has been imitated by all succeeding writers; and it may be doubted whether from all his successors more maxims of theoretical knowledge, or more rules of practical prudence can be collected than he alone has given to his country.” Dr. Samuel Johnson Preface 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 bypaths 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 had in view by the author of these Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare. E. T. R. Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare A Midsummer Night’s Dream A Midsummer Night’s Dream Hermia and Lysander were lovers; 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 them 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 quarreling. 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 favorite 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