The following Tales are meant to be submitted to the young reader as anintroduction to the study of Shakespeare, for which purpose his wordsare used whenever it seemed possible to bring them in; and in whateverhas been added to give them the regular form of a connected story,diligent are has been taken to select such words as might leastinterrupt the effect of the beautiful English tongue in which he wrote:therefore, words introduced into our language since his time have beenas far as possible avoided.
In those tales which have been taken from the Tragedies, the youngreaders will perceive, when they come to see the source from whichthese stories are derived, that Shakespeare's own words, with littlealteration, recur very frequently in the narrative as well as in thedialogue; but in those made from the Comedies the writers foundthemselves scarcely ever able to turn his words into the narrativeform: therefore it is feared that, in them, dialogue has been made useof too frequently for young people not accustomed to the dramatic formof writing. But this fault, if it be a fault, has been caused by anearnest wish to give as much of Shakespeare's own words as possible:and if the 'He said,' and 'She said,' the question and the reply,should sometimes seem tedious to their young ears, they must pardon it,because it was the only way in which could be given to them a few hintsand little foretastes of the great pleasure which awaits them in theirelder years, when they come to the rich treasures from which thesesmall and valueless coins are extracted; pretending to no other meritthan as faint and imperfect stamps of Shakespeare's matchless image.Faint and imperfect images they must be called, because the beauty ofhis language is too frequently destroyed by the necessity of changingmany of his excellent words into words far less expressive of his truesense, to make it read something like prose; and even in some fewplaces, where his blank verse is given unaltered, as hoping from itssimple plainness to cheat the young reader into the belief that theyare reading prose, yet still his language being transplanted from itsown natural soil and wild poetic garden, it must want much of itsnative beauty.
It has been wished to make these Tales easy reading for very youngchildren. To the utmost of their ability the writers have constantlykept this in mind; but the subjects of most of them made this a verydifficult task. It was no easy matter to give the histories of men andwomen in terms familiar to the apprehension of a very young mind. Foryoung ladies too, it has been the intention chiefly to write; becauseboys being generally permitted the use of their fathers' libraries at amuch earlier age than girls are, they frequently have the best scenesof Shakespeare by heart, before their sisters are permitted to lookinto this manly book; and, therefore, instead of recommending theseTales to the perusal of young gentlemen who can read them so muchbetter in the originals, their kind assistance is rather requested inexplaining to their sisters such parts as are hardest for them tounderstand: and when they have helped them to get over thedifficulties, then perhaps they will read to them (carefully selectingwhat is proper for a young sister's ear) some passage which has pleasedthem in one of these stories, in the very words of the scene from whichit is taken; and it is hoped they will find that the beautifulextracts, the select passages, they may choose to give their sisters inthis way will be much better relished and understood from their havingsome notion of the general story from one of these imperfectabridgments; which if they be fortunately so done as to proved