# Tales from Shakespeare, illus. Rackham (1908)/Editor's Note

EDITOR'S NOTE
Charles Lamb was still a young man, not yet known as "Elia" of the essays, when he and his sister and life-long companion, Mary, wrote together in 1806 the Tales from Shakespeare; they were living at the time in Mitre Court Buildings, Temple. In a letter to a friend in that year, Mary Lamb says that plays, novels, poems, and "all manner of such-like vapouring and vaporous schemes are floating in my head," the result being that Charles, writing on May the 10th, speaks of Mary as having already completed six of the tales: "The Tempest," "Winter's Tale," "Midsummer Night's Dream," "Much Ado," "Two Gentlemen of Verona," and "Cymbeline." "The Merchant of Venice" was in preparation; Charles himself had done "Othello" and "Macbeth," and said it was his intention to do all the tragedies.
We get other interesting glimpses of the tales from Mary. "You would like to see us," she says, "as we often sit writing on one table (but not on one cushion sitting), like Hermia and Helena in the 'Midsummer Night's Dream'; or, rather, like an old literary Darby and Joan; I taking snuff, and he groaning all the while, and saying he can make nothing of it, which he always says till he has finished, and then he finds that he has made something of it." And in one of Charles's letters he writes:—"Mary is stuck fast in 'All's well that ends well.' She complains of having to set forth so many female characters in boys' clothes. She begins to think Shakespeare must have wanted—imagination! I, to encourage her (for she often faints in the prosecution of her great work), flatter her by telling her how well such a play and such a play is done. But she is stuck fast, and I have been obliged to promise to assist her. To do this it will be necessary to leave off tobacco." Later on, Mary writes that "Charles has been reading over the tale I ​told you plagued me so much, and he thinks it's one of the very best: it is 'All's well that ends well.'" Finally, we find on Jan. 29th, 1807, Charles writing to Wordsworth, "We have booked off from Swan and Two Necks, Lad Lane, this day (per coach), the 'Tales from Shakespeare.' . . . We think 'Pericles' of hers the best, and 'Othello' of mine; but I hope all have some good."
Charles Lamb died at Edmonton in 1834. Mary Lamb lived for some years after him, and dying in 1847, was buried by his side in Edmonton churchyard.
Besides the "Tales from Shakespeare," 1807, we have three tales by Charles in Mary Lamb's "Mrs. Leicester's School," 1808, and "Poetry for Children," which he wrote with her in 1809. The "Essays of Elia," 1823, and the "Last Essays of Elia," 1833, are his most precious books. How precious they are you will know when you read Elia's reverie upon Dream-Children, and his boyish "Recollections of Christ's Hospital."
The following is a list of the works of Charles Lamb—
Blank Verse by Charles Lloyd and Charles Lamb, 1798; A Tale of Rosamund Gray and Old Blind Margaret, 1798; John Woodvil, a Tragedy, 1802; Mrs. Leicester's School, 1807, by Charles and Mary Lamb; Tales from Shakespeare, 1807; The Adventures of Ulysses, 1808 [B. M. 1810?]; Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, 1808; Poetry for Children: Prince Dorus, 1811; The Works of Charles Lamb, 2 vols., 1818; Elia Essays, 1823; Album Verses, 1830; Satan in Search of a Wife, 1831; The Last Essays of Elia, 1833; Poems on Various Subjects by S. T. Coleridge, late of Jesus College, Cambridge, 1796, contains four sonnets by Lamb, signed "C. L.," referred to by Coleridge in his preface as by Mr. Charles Lamb of the India House; Poems by S. T. Coleridge, 2nd edition, to which are now added Poems by Charles Lamb and Charles Lloyd, 1797; Works, 2 vols. (C. & J. Olliver), 1818; Works (E. Moxon), 1840, 1859, 1870; Works (edited and prefaced by R. H. Shepherd), 1875; Works (edited with biographical introduction and notes by C. Kent), 1876; Life (by Sir T. N. Talfourd), Letters, and Writings, 6 vols. (E. Moxon & Co.), 1876; Life (by Sir T. N. Talfourd), Letters, and Writings (edited by Percy Fitzgerald), The Temple Edition (printed from the stereotype plates of Moxon's Edition), 6 vols., 1895; Life and Works, introduction and notes by A. Ainger, 12 vols., 1899-1900; Works (edited by W. Macdonald), 12 vols., 1903.