Tales from Shakespeare - ELI Readers

Charles and Mary Lamb TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE

Readers

Readers

Teen

Young Adult

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Book brief

This collection includes seven of Shakespeare’s plays according to the simplified stories written by Charles and Mary Lamb in their book Tales from Shakespeare.

The stories, rewritten here as plays, are full of Shakespeare’s colourful characters and include many of his original words.

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The characters have to deal with many different emotions such as love, hate, ambition and jealousy.

Each play has a different setting such as ancient Greece, Scotland, Sicily and even a magic island.

Themes included in the plays are friendship, separation and finding each other again, magic and the nature of dreams.

In this reader:

21st Century Skills

First

Culture Notes

Glossary Picture Caption

Audio

To encourage students to connect the story to the world they live in.

B2 level activities.

Brief cultural information.

An explanation of difficult words.

A brief explanation of the picture.

These icons indicate the parts of the story that are recorded: start stop

The FSC certification guarantees that the paper used in these publications comes from certified forests, promoting responsible forestry management worldwide.

For this series of ELI graded readers, we have planted 5000 new trees.

Charles and Mary Lamb

Tales from Shakespeare

Retold and Activities by Silvana Sardi Illustrated by Alicia Baladan

Young Adult Eli Readers

The ELI Readers collection is a complete range of books and plays for readers of all ages, ranging from captivating contemporary stories to timeless classics. There are four series, each catering for a different age group: First ELI Readers, Young ELI Readers, Teen ELI Readers and Young Adult ELI Readers.

The books are carefully edited and beautifully illustrated to capture the essence of the stories and plots. The readers are supplemented with ‘Focus on’ texts packed with background cultural information about the writers and their lives and times.

Tales from Shakespeare

Charles and Mary Lamb

Retold and Activities

Silvana Sardi

Language Level Consultants

Janet Borsbey and Ruth Swan

Illustrations

Alicia Baladan

ELI Readers

Founder and Series Editors

Paola Accattoli, Grazia Ancillani, Daniele Garbuglia (Art Director)

Graphic Design

Tiziana Barigelletti

Production Manager Francesco Capitano

Photo credits Shutterstock © New edition: 2022 First edition: 2014 ELi, Gruppo editoriale ELi P.O. Box 6 62019 Recanati (MC) Italy T +39 071750701 F +39 071977851 info@elionline.com www.elionline.com

Typeset in 10,5 / 15 pt Monotype Fulmar Printed in Italy by Tecnostampa – Pigini Group Printing Division Loreto – Trevi (Italia) – ERA 413.10

ISBN 978-88-536-3252-4 www.eligradedreaders.com

Before you Read

Collection of Plays

Introduction to Drama

You Like It

Merchant of Venice

Tempest

Activities

Twelfth Night, or What You Will

Activities

Activities

Activities

Activities

Focus on...

Focus on...

Syllabus

Much Ado About Nothing

Midsummer Night’s Dream

and Mary Lamb

Elizabethan Age (CLIL History)

This Collection of Plays by Shakespeare

As You Like It

Love, adventure and romance for the brave Orlando in the Forest of Arden.

The Merchant of Venice Antonio the merchant risks death at the hands of his enemy Shylock.

The Tempest

The magic world of Prospero and his fight for justice.

Twelfth Night, or What You Will Disguise, and confusion over identity, make this love story full of fun.

Macbeth

A man’s ambition and his belief in the words of three evil witches lead to death and destruction.

Much Ado About Nothing

Jealous of his halfbrother and his friends, Don John plans to ruin the day for all.

A Midsummer

Night’s Dream Tiny fairies cause a lot of confusion when they decide to play with the magical love juice from a little purple flower.

An Introduction to Drama

Charles and Mary Lamb wrote a simplified version of Shakespeare’s plays in story form in their book Tales from Shakespeare. In this collection, these simplified stories have been written as plays again, to be read or acted, maintaining, as the Lambs did, many of Shakespeare’s original words. In each play, you’ll meet Shakespeare’s colourful characters who have to deal with many emotions such as love, hate, ambition and jealousy in many different situations. However, before entering this magical world, it’s necessary to understand something about drama in order to fully enjoy Shakespeare’s works.

The Origins of Drama and its Elements

Drama is a story, known as a play, acted out on stage, by actors and actresses who take the parts of specific characters. There are two main types: tragedies (serious plays where the main character meets an unhappy end full of disaster) and comedies (funny plays that end happily). The plays are told through dialogue and stage directions which tell the actors how they should move and react to what is happening.

Drama, in its forms of tragedy and comedy, first appeared in the Greek classics. In ancient Greece, people used to gather to watch religious ceremonies. These ceremonies included a chorus, a group of people that spoke and moved together, commenting on the main action. From here, drama began to take shape. In any dramatic work, the actors on stage communicate with the audience. Therefore, every performance is different, as the audience can react in a different way. The presentation of the play can also vary, according to the period in which it’s shown and the traditions of that time.

Shakespeare’s Plays

Shakespeare’s plays can be divided into three main types: tragedy, history and comedy plays. In his tragedy plays, the characters are never just ordinary people, but are usually kings or princes and are usually guilty of some action and controlled by fate. Themes usually included in tragedies are suffering, people going mad, and death.

On the other hand, his comedies usually deal with ordinary people in normal situations in an amusing way. There are usually strange circumstances or confusion over identities which lead to funny situations. Love is also usually one of the main themes, and any problems are solved by the end of the play.

Main Characteristics of a Play

Plays are divided into acts and each act is divided into scenes, according to the plot which is a series of events connected to each other.

The acts are usually divided as follows:

Act 1: introduction to the plot and characters.

Act 2: development of the plot (rising action) - these events lead to the turning point in the action.

Act 3: turning point - a decisive change that happens in the situation.

Act 4: complications (falling action) – events following the turning point, which lead to the conclusion.

Act 5: denouement, that is, the solving of all problems, the conclusion.

Elizabethan tragedies were usually introduced by a prologue spoken by the chorus to introduce characters to the audience and set the scene. There was also often an epilogue at the end of the play to conclude the story.

Plot: this is the storyline of the play. Charles and Mary Lamb concentrated on the main plot in Shakespeare’s plays, when writing their stories, without including the subplots, stories within a story, which are present in all of Shakespeare’s works.

Setting: this is the time and place of the action and is communicated to the audience through dialogue and stage directions which also create the mood and emotional strength of the scene.

Stage directions: these are the instructions that the playwright gives to the director and actors as to how the play should be staged. They give information about the setting and maybe how actors should move and what kind of emotions they should show.

Characters: these are the people in the play. There’s usually a key person, known as the protagonist, the one most involved in the story. This person isn’t always a hero, or good person, as can be seen in Macbeth. Then there’s usually the antagonist who’s the protagonist’s main enemy. Some characters are more important in the play than others, so they’re considered main, while the others are considered minor.

Techniques in Drama

Various techniques are used in drama to make it more effective and to give the audience information about characters or events that haven’t happened on stage. They’re as follows:

Dialogue: when two or more characters speak together. Through dialogue, the audience can understand the plot, find out about characters and their relationships and hear about past or future events.

Asides: words spoken by a character, usually to be heard only by the audience and not by the others on stage. These comments let the audience know what the character is really thinking and can also be comical.

Soliloquy: one character is alone on stage and makes a long speech, in which he tells the audience about his thoughts and feelings, his plans for the future, or why he’s behaved in a certain way.

Monologue: there are many characters on stage, but just one of them makes a speech which is usually quite long. Unlike a soliloquy and most asides, a monologue is heard by other characters on stage.

Before you Read

Grammar B2 First

1 Read about Shakespeare and complete the text with one word for each gap.

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, in April 1564. He was (1) ............................. eldest son and was given a good education at his local school, (2) ............................. he studied classical authors. He married Anne Hathaway, who was eight years older than (3) ............................., when he was only eighteen, and they had three children. In 1584, he left his home town and went to London to join a drama company. His success was not (4) ............................. to his acting abilities, but to his way of writing. He soon became the main playwright of one of the (5) ............................. successful companies of actors in England called the ‘Lord Chamberlain’s Men’. In 1559, this company built the Globe Theatre, where most of his plays (6) ............................. performed. The first plays he wrote were historical, then he moved on to comedies full of romance, and finally turned his attention to the great tragedies, (7) ............................. Macbeth. After many years of success in London, he eventually retired to his home town, where he died at the (8) ............................. of fifty-two. Only half of his plays were printed during his lifetime. In all his plays, Shakespeare includes people from all social classes, (9) princes to servants, and the action often involves family relationships, (10) ............................. father and child, brother and sister, or husband and wife.

At times, the audience isn’t just aware (11) ............................. the action being performed on stage, but is told details of events that have happened off stage, so the play has more depth and meaning. Shakespeare (12) ............................. use of soliloquies, asides and introductions to give the audience further information necessary to understand the plot and what consequences it has on the characters.

Vocabulary

Look at the introduction and complete the sentences with a word from the box.

• stage directions • soliloquy • monologue

• turning point

1 Through a ................................. the audience and the other actors can find out what a character thinks or feels.

................................. are sometimes used to add a comic effect to the scene because the audience knows something that the other characters on stage don’t know.

3 An actor knows when to enter a scene by reading the ............................... .

In a ................................., an actor has the stage to himself to tell the audience about his thoughts and feelings.

5 The ................................. is when something important happens in the play that changes all further events.

6 If there is an interesting ................................. then the audience will remember the story and will enjoy the play.

Speaking

21st Century Skills

3 Discuss and compare with a partner the main features of tragedies and comedies. Think about:

characters    • themes    • setting

Listening

Listen to the start of the first play in this collection, As You Like It.

these statements true (T) or false (F)?

All of France is ruled by one prince.

Prince Frederick has an older brother.

Arden is the name of the prince’s palace.

Rosalind and Celia are sisters.

Celia wants Rosalind to feel happy.

Rosalind is enthusiastic about the idea of a fight.