Page:Tales from Shakespeare - Lamb C and M, Rackham A (1908).djvu/11



Author: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