ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how various genres associated with fable and fantasy – ranging from fairy-tales to comics and graphic novels – have succeeded in rendering William Shakespeare habitable for new audiences across both temporal and geographical boundaries. It focuses on adaptations of the comedy and romance most directly associated with magical and fantastical worlds that appeal to young audiences: A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest. In the final act of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Duke Theseus muses that "as imagination bodies forth / The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen / Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing / A local habitation and a name". Marcia Williams offers an entirely different approach to adapting Shakespeare for children than the authors surveyed because she is at once the author and the illustrator for all her adaptations. The experience with adaptive appropriation renders successive encounters with Shakespeare potentially.
