Charles and Mary Lamb, brother and sister, collaborated on narrative versions of 20 plays in their ''Tales From Shakespeare.''

The following Tales are meant to be submitted to the young reader as an introduction to the study of Shakespeare, for which purpose his words are used whenever it seemed possible to bring them in; and in whatever has been added to give them the regular form of a connected story, diligent are has been taken to select such words as might least interrupt the effect of the beautiful English tongue in which he wrote: therefore, words introduced into our language since his time have been as far as possible avoided.

The following plays are recounted here: The Tempest, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Winter's Tale, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Merchant of Venice, Cymbeline, King Lear, Macbeth, All's Well That Ends Well, The Taming of the Shrew, The Comedy of Errors, Measure for Measure, Twelfth Night; or, What You Will, Timon of Athens, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Othello, Pericles, and Prince of Tyre.