READABLE SHAKESPEARE
Unless we are still wearing codpieces and pantaloons, Shakespeare’s language is not our own, and though it’s intelligible, it takes more effort than a modern book. Even perfectly understandable words like thee and thou in repetition with a lot of less familiar words build up into a collective wall that the reader has to break down, or get used to sitting in its shade. A third option is to find a Shakespeare in completely modern language, but for those who feel this is an unnecessary intrusion I’ve devised this Readable Shakespeare to stay as close the original as possible by just adding a minimum of translations. The idea is to simply throw all the footnotes and word explanations that usually sit at the bottom of a scholarly Shakespeare edition into the reading text.
HENRY VI, PART ONE
Fear? That's a French word. We English don't know what it means.
Henry V is dead, and England's conquests in France are in dire peril. New hope electrifies the French armies in the person of a visionary warrior... Joan of Arc.
In England, the fractious ambitions of the nobles are no help to the cause, and factions align behind the symbols of contention - the white rose of the Yorkists or the royal red of the Lancasters.
Only the heroic Talbot is left to hold back the tide of the French and preserve English glory, or will he instead lose everything, undermanned in France and undermined at home?
Shakespeare's first trilogy of the English civil wars kicks off, rich in blood, easy to read.
Unless we are still wearing codpieces and pantaloons, Shakespeare’s language is not our own, and though it’s intelligible, it takes more effort than a modern book. Even perfectly understandable words like thee and thou in repetition with a lot of less familiar words build up into a collective wall that the reader has to break down, or get used to sitting in its shade. A third option is to find a Shakespeare in completely modern language, but for those who feel this is an unnecessary intrusion I’ve devised this Readable Shakespeare to stay as close the original as possible by just adding a minimum of translations. The idea is to simply throw all the footnotes and word explanations that usually sit at the bottom of a scholarly Shakespeare edition into the reading text.
HENRY VI, PART ONE
Fear? That's a French word. We English don't know what it means.
Henry V is dead, and England's conquests in France are in dire peril. New hope electrifies the French armies in the person of a visionary warrior... Joan of Arc.
In England, the fractious ambitions of the nobles are no help to the cause, and factions align behind the symbols of contention - the white rose of the Yorkists or the royal red of the Lancasters.
Only the heroic Talbot is left to hold back the tide of the French and preserve English glory, or will he instead lose everything, undermanned in France and undermined at home?
Shakespeare's first trilogy of the English civil wars kicks off, rich in blood, easy to read.
