Here’s a list that’s right up my alley -Top 10 Shakespeare Books for Children. My first thought is, “I wonder how many of them I have?”  My second is, “I wonder how many are “filler” that shouldn’t on this list?”

Charles and Mary Lamb make an appearance, of course. I never liked these, and I’m probably in the minority. Not only is the writing really dated, but the stories are painfully abridged. Their version of The Tempest completely cuts out the entire Trinculo/Stephano subplot.  Go ahead, search for their names, they’re not in there.

Usborne’s Illustrated Shakespeare got the most play (ha!) in my house, mostly because it’s been around the longest and has pictures. My daughter picked it up on more than one occasion by herself to read the stories.

I want to like the Shakespeare Can Be Fun series, which retell the stories entirely in a series of rhyming couplets, illustrated by children’s drawings. But they are an insane chore to work through! You have no idea how hard it is to read rhyming couplets until you try to read an entire play that way. I take these to my kids’ classrooms to read and the kids get up and go see what else is available. True story.

Marcia Williams’ books are our most recent find, and are excellent on all levels. If anything they’re packed a little too densely, translating each page into a series of comic-book panels with commentary from the audience running down the margins.  You want to read it all but it’s hard to tell *how* to read it all.

Definitely some new ideas on the list, and some books I don’t have yet.

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The other day my family took a little vacation to the Newport Mansions, a neighborhood of Gilded Age mansions owned by families like the Vanderbilts. Everything we saw was all mid-to-late 1800’s and basically looked like sets from Downton Abbey.

Of course I spent all my time looking for Shakespeare references.

At one point I did see a book open on a table that said something about the lamentable death of King Edward the something.  I leaned so far over the rope to read more that an alarm went off ;).  But I don’t believe I was looking at anything Shakespearean.

What I did see, in one of the libraries, was a set of volumes entitled “The Complete Works of Shakspere”.  Note the spelling. I even called the kids over to spot it.

I wonder if I was looking at this 1850 edition?

What frustrates me is I came back to the computer and started googling for references to either Vanderbilt Shakespeare, or gilded age Shakespeare.  What I found in the case of the former was little more than stories from Vanderbilt University’s Shakespeare program, and nothing about the families potential early interest in our favorite playwright.

When I googled the latter I discovered the novel of the same name by Mr. Mark Twain, and I think I learned that Shakespeare is actually where we get the term in the first place? That I did not know.  I knew about laughing at gilded butterflies and gilding the lilly but I guess I never made the connection that the entire expression to gild something all comes from Shakespeare.

What was the state of American Shakespeare in the late 1800’s, anybody know? We know about President Lincoln’s interest, and the Booth family.  I guess I just assumed that somewhere in one of those mansions in all the stories about all the parties they threw, somebody would have mention something Shakespearean, someplace.

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Once again I tripped into a conversation where somebody said, “What Shakespeare should I read next?” and somebody said, “Why read them when you can watch them?” Two different people responded that way, actually.

Here’s the problem. The original person didn’t say “I know nothing about Shakespeare so I thought I’d start by reading them,” or anything of the sort to indicate that he was brand new at this game. On the contrary, what he’d said was, “I’ve already read Hamlet and Henry V and would like to try a comedy next, got any suggestions?” So we’ve got someone who has made it pretty clear that his desire is to read the plays. And yet still the answer is, “Why read when you can watch?”

I get it. I understand that your best introduction to Shakespeare is to see it performed. I am not arguing against that. When somebody comes up to me and says, “I know nothing about Shakespeare, which play should I read first?” I will be on the same bandwagon that says, “Go see a live show or rent a movie, but please don’t try to read the text first.”

Let’s think that through, though. Let’s say that I convince my coworker to go see Timon of Athens, a play that she’s never even heard of, let alone seen.

You really think she’s going to get it? You think she’s going to follow plot and character and understand what they’re all saying and appreciate why I recommended it to her in the first place? Or do you think she’s going to miss 90% of what happens and be completely lost, other than for a few key “Ok he clearly is angry at that guy” moments that you could get entirely from the body language?

“But wait!” you say, turning to the front of the Playbill, “Here’s the play summary, and cast of characters.  This gives the audience an overview of the story to read before the performance starts.”

Great. So what you’ve just told us is, “Don’t read the actual Shakespeare, but do read the TL;DR version.”

Really? Is this some sort of Bizarro-world high school English class where the student tries to read the original and the teacher say “nonono, here, read the cliff notes!”

I don’t think we can have it both ways. I don’t think that you can walk into most Shakespeare plays cold.  I also don’t think that the one-page summary in front of the Playbill is going to give you a sense of understanding anything but character and plot.  I think more highly of my audience, especially those that actually come looking to read the works.  Surely there’s room for a middle ground we can point these folks that is not too over their heads to start, but does not insult them by dumbing it down until all the life is crushed from it?

Here’s what I’ve got in mind…

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