How would you tell the story of a Shakespeare play to a ten year old? Would you leave out the casket scenes from The Merchant of Venice? The mechanicals from A Midsummer Night's Dream, Jaques and Touchstone from As You Like It? The Gloucester subplot from King Lear? Autolycus from The Winter's Tale? Or Sir Toby, Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Feste, together with the gulling of Malvolio from Twelfth Night? Would you have Antonio openly repentant, full of shame and remorse, at the end of The Tempest, and present the Christians in The Merchant of Venice in a wholly favourable light?

That's what happens in Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb, still in print after nearly two hundred years. At first hearing, these omissions and emphases seem strange, even risible. But to censure the Lambs is to mistake their endeavour. They intended their Tales as an introduction to Shakespeare, and an introduction is just that: something which assumes that further acquaintance will follow which fills in gaps and makes more subtle discriminations.