ABSTRACT
Shakespeare became part of compulsory education rather late in the Victorian period, but long before the Education Act of 1870 put several of his plays on the curriculum children were being introduced to his works in a variety of adaptations written especially for young readers. Building on the success of Charles and Mary Lamb’s enduringly popular Tales from Shakespear, which was published in 1807 and remained in print throughout the century and beyond, the periodicals published an extensive array of prose adaptations, criticism, biographies, short plays, and parodies. As one component of the generalised popularisation of Shakespeare during the Victorian era, the Victorian children’s periodicals constitute a significant but hitherto unappreciated mechanism contributing to the rise of a popular Shakespeare.1 In return, Shakespeare as he was depicted in these periodicals helped to shape a nascent sense of national identity among England’s youth, embracing adventure, exploration, and conquest for boys, self-sacrificing daughterhood-and eventually motherhood-for girls. That these children’s periodicals exploited Shakespeare as part of a larger project to promote a moral agenda to English youth, or, less often, to resist one, provides one explanation for the Victorians’ ongoing fascination with Shakespeare for children.
