Twenty of Shakespeare's plays, including both tragedies and comedies, retold in prose

Charles and Mary Lamb are masters at relating fourteen of Shakespeare's comedies and six of his tragedies. Plays included are: 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, Timon of Athens, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Othello, and Pericles.

Published in 1807, Charles and Mary Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare was the first book to summarize Shakespeare's plays in prose form, thus making them available to a wider audience and increasing both familiarity with and popularity of Shakespeare's plays.