Shakespeare for Children: A Comparative Study of Selected Tales by Charles and Mary Lamb, and Kamil Kilani

Abstract

Both the Lamb siblings and Kamil Kilani attempt adapting Shakespeare for young readers in different cultural frameworks. Comparing and contrasting those attempts reveal a number of interesting facts concerning the several factors directing the entire adaptation process. The adapters’ own images of childhood and their conception of children’s literature play a crucial part. Criteria of text-comprehensibility and text attractiveness are pivotal. Further, the socio-political context and aspects of history must be considered in-depth for a more illuminating reading of the texts at hand. Last but not least, the adapter’s ideological mindset and her/his own intentions are definitely relevant in adaptation studies. Charles and Mary Lamb show strong eagerness to revive interest in Shakespearean drama. Tales from Shakespeare is an unprecedented attempt of transposing a number of canonical Shakespeare’s plays from the realm of high literature to popular fiction and children’s literature. Regardless of its strengths and weaknesses, this book is much celebrated for it is the first endeavour to introduce Shakespeare to young readers paving the way for more readings to follow. The Lambs show a very conservative, rather diffident, attitude in dealing with the source texts of the master. Describing their very work, they claim it is “faint and imperfect stamps” of the unsurpassable Shakespeare. They do not modify much in the plays. They merely simplify the source text through eliminating the sub-plot and using less details for accessibility purposes. Other reader-oriented alterations comprise shifting the genre from drama to narrative prose using story telling technique together with mingling other genres like verse, illustrations and dramatic dialogue, typical of children’s literature. The linguistic level is closer to the Shakespearean text as they preserve much of the language and the phrasings used by Shakespeare himself, and this is overtly acknowledged in their preface to the tales.