TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE

Seven plays—Romeo and Juliet, MacBeth, The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Julius Caesar, and Hamlet—have been condensed into the comic-strip panels of Williams’s other retellings (The Iliad and the Odyssey, 1996, etc.); Shakespeare’s words are spouted by the performers, summaries of the plot appear beneath the frames, and Elizabethan-era playgoers heckle and comment from the sides and bottom of every page—e.g., “Go on! Kiss her.” Some plays take up two or three spreads, but for all their compactness, these condensations are surprisingly clear and faithful. The plays are newly accessible to a contemporary audience; with 40-50 players and members of the audience on every page, there humor in every corner and high drama in most frames. Every play is given its own palette; Macbeth’s is appropriately ghostly and spooky, while A Midsummer Night’s Dream is suitably sprightly and exhaustively antic. For readers familiar with the plays, the synopses are amusing and the watercolor depictions impressive; for those using this work as an entry to Shakespeare’s works, welcome. (Picture book. 8-11)