Shakespeare Globe

Globe Recommends books for children

Retellings of Shakespeare’s Stories in the bicentenary of the Lambs’ Tales

It seemed such a simple idea. Two hundred years after the publication of Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb in 1807, a panel invited by Patrick Spottiswoode, Director, Globe Education would investigate the modern equivalents. They would recommend the ones which best agreed with Globe Ed's way of introducing children to Shakespeare. This at least we were all agreed on, the four staff and two guest members who met in late October: Globe Ed intends to introduce children to Shakespeare by using (as far as possible) the original text; never to patronise; always to bear in mind that the plays are meant to be performed; and to make the whole experience of finding out about them pleasurable and relevant to someone growing up in the twenty-first century.

That was the easy bit. The next question was: what should retellings for the primary age group set out to do? Should the stories stand alone or should we be hoping that the retellings will lead to the text itself, preferably experienced in a theatre? Should they keep as close as possible to the original or is it acceptable to find, say, Romeo and Juliet reset in modern London - or even way into the future? How important are illustrations? Given that children are more used to 'reading' pictures than most of their elders, could tales be told almost exclusively by visual means? What about value for money? And whom did we envisage buying the books - a teacher, the young person, or perhaps an aunt looking for an instructive but lavish gift?

The Lambs set out their stall in their Preface. The Tales should be 'submitted to the young reader as an introduction to the study of Shakespeare, for which purpose his words are used whenever it seems possible'. So far so good. They admitted the task was a daunting one, but hoped to keep their language simple and to lead young people, ultimately, to the plays themselves. The language may be different now, but we would hope modern retellers would agree. The Lambs, of course, included no illustrations. And here there is a distinct parting of the ways: all the submissions we have considered are illustrated in one way or another.

Sometimes there was a tendency to chocolate box prettiness. Even Angela Barrett’s fine work in The Orchard Book of Shakespeare Stories might occasionally be accused of this, although the book is immensely enhanced by illuminating notes about her sources. Andrew Matthews’ text is lively and never patronising, but it’s a shame, given the helpful information about the Globe, that the magic of theatre is described in the Foreword in terms of lights dimming.

If some members of the panel had severe reservations about Manga-style Shakespeare, feeling the illustration compromised rather than illuminated the text, there was a general recognition that this could be a valuable way of bringing immediacy to the tales for some young readers. We took seriously the comments of pupils who read the books in school. Two 10-year-olds gave full marks ('outstanding', 'amazing') to both Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet in this series, but adults may find it harder to tune in.

Illusrtrations by children are a novelty in the Shakespeare Can Be Fun! series but, coupled with poor quality doggerel verse, they are not sufficient to involve the target reader of a similar age to the artists.

Saddleback's garish colour strips are simply poor quality. Classical Comics’ Henry V is a superior example of this cinematic style, but we were unsure whether the publishers hoped a young reader would move through the sequence, eventually reading the full play (but with no distinction between verse and prose) crammed into bubbles over the same illustrations as in the simplified versions. If so, this would be an expensive option. A 10-year-old critic, however, described the simple text version as 'very successful'.

Of the gift books, Usborne’s Stories from Shakespeare has vigorous artwork but print tiny enough to need a magnifying glass. A larger version is also published, but we did not have the opportunity to consider this. Interestingly, one young critic in Year 3 thought there were 'too many' pictures in Shakespeare’s Stories illustrated by James Mayhew. In the same volume, an adult might find Beverley Birch’s writing style over-decorated at times, but she successfully includes suitable bits of original text within the story. She even manages this in the short version of Romeo and Juliet for the youngest readers in Wayland’s Shakespeare’s Tales, although here the school critics would have liked more pictures.

Among other retellings more likely to turn up in classrooms than Christmas stockings, The Shakespeare Collection, with its glossy colour pictures, elicited comments as diverse as 'storytelling is great' and 'babyish' from young critics. The story of Macbeth, as an example, is reduced to its basics but retains some of the excitement. Orchard’s Shakespeare Story series is straightforward with humorous, expressive line-drawings by Tony Ross, which - unfortunately - did not always please young readers now familiar with more glossy illustrations.

White Wolves is a series but its components have few uniform characteristics. Tony Bradman’s Macbeth is the best of these, avoiding the patronising tone of Michael Cox’s Romeo and Juliet. The storytelling is clear and close to Shakespeare’s play, but illustrations are few.

Marcia Williams’ two offerings might fall into either school or gift category. They are great fun, made up of busy strips with borders containing little characters who comment on the action. Williams was inspired by the Globe and imagined groundlings watching the plays. It is a shame that this element is sometimes patronising to the potential reader (who will be seduced by the Where’s Wally-style activity in the illustrations) especially as the main stories often include welcome speech extracts from the plays.

Two books submitted didn’t fulfil the requirements for our immediate purpose in that they were not retellings of the stories of the plays. Shakespeare’s Globe: a Pop-up Play Theatre, by Toby Forward, illustrated by Juan Wijngaard (Walker Books £14.99), contains a highly desirable model of the Globe with printed scenes and cardboard characters to play with on the stage. Unfortunately, the structure is not durable and the scenes are too many and too short. There is, however, some interesting historical information about the real Globe. Shakespeare’s Storybook: Folk Tales that Inspired the Bard, by Patrick Ryan and James Mayhew (Barefoot Books £9.99) is a delight. Here, seven of the stories on which Shakespeare based plays – The Taming of the Shrew, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, Hamlet, King Lear and The Winter’s Tale - are beautifully retold and illustrated, with two CDs tucked into the covers for those who would prefer to listen to Patrick Ryan reading them.

The panel warmed to two publications within the strict retelling category. Leon Garfield’s classic Shakespeare Stories, with Michael Foreman’s evocative illustrations, is still hard to beat, although we had to admit that the text could look dense to a young reader and the book is perhaps off-puttingly hefty. But Leon Garfield was a writer on a child’s wavelength – and so is Michael Rosen. His Romeo and Juliet (significantly, 'presented' by writer and illustrator rather than retold) keeps the headlong excitement of the story, dropping in far more of the text than most authors would dare and explaining difficult words discreetly in the colourful borders. Clearly introduced, so that the reader is drawn into the world of the play, and ending with a reminder of the Elizabethan audience leaving the theatre, Rosen’s version makes a perfect link between story and play; reading and theatre.

In conclusion, few of the submissions drew wholehearted enthusiasm from the panel. We were by turns surprised, horrified, bored and – occasionally – delighted. There's a busy industry now where once Charles and Mary Lamb had the field to themselves. Look carefully before you buy!

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