The Children's Shakespeare

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E. Nesbit, William Shakespeare, and Rolf Klep. The Children's Shakespeare. New York: Random House, 1938. 

Image Source: University of Oregon Rare Books Collection

Prolific children’s author Edith Nesbit offered her child-friendly adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays, first published in 1897, in explicit imitation of the Lambs’ Tales. Opening with a frame tale, the book represents her real-life children as frustrated by their inability to understand Shakespeare. To help, Nesbit the mother retells 12 plays in contemporary language. Like the Lambs, Nesbit presents her adaptations as preparation for adult reading of Shakespeare in the original. In an opening frame tale, Nesbit acknowledges the different emphases presented by Shakespearean adaptations that focus on plot rather than language. Though she tells her children that the plots are the “least part” of Shakespeare, they insist: “It’s the stories we  like.” Like other 19th-century children’s adaptations, Nesbit’s both simplify Shakespeare’s language and prepare children for the moral and interpretive frames expected of adult readers.

Rolf Klep studied art at the University of Oregon, which houses this 1938 edition of Nesbit's adaptations that he illustrated. Largely a commercial artist renowned for his skill as a technical and cutaway illustrator, Klep also illustrated literary works. His image of Titania falling in love with a transformed Bottom, from Nesbit's retelling of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, emphasizes figures dwarfed by foliage with strategic deployment of color.