ABSTRACT
In her preface to The Best of Shakespeare: Retellings of Ten Classic Plays, E. Nesbit recounts a conversation with her children upon their first exposure to Shakespeare: “Poring over” a volume of Shakespeare’s plays, the children complain, “I can’t understand a word of it … What does it all mean?” Daughter Rosamund adds, “it’s the stories we like,” to which Nesbit replies, “You see he did not write for children.” Daughter Iris provides her mother with an authorial commission she cannot refuse: “Why don’t you write the stories for us so that we can understand them … and then, when we are grown up, we shall understand the plays so much better. Do! do!” (Nesbit, 8–9).
