Shakespeare's Stories for Young Readers

by E. Nesbit

  “Oh, Imogen, my love, my life!” he cried. “Oh, Imogen!”

  Then Imogen, forgetting she was disguised, cried out, “Peace, my lord—here, here!”

  Leonatus turned to strike the forward page who thus interfered in his great trouble, and then he saw that it was his wife, Imogen, and they fell into each other’s arms.

  The King was so glad to see his dear daughter again, and so grateful to the man who had rescued him (whom he now found to be Leonatus), that he gave his blessing on their marriage, and he turned to Bellarius, and the two boys. Now Bellarius spoke—

  “I am your old servant, Bellarius. You accused me of treason when I had only been loyal to you, and to be doubted, made me disloyal. So I stole your two sons, and see,—they are here!” And he brought forward the two boys, who had sworn to be brothers to Imogen when they thought she was a boy like themselves.

  The wicked Queen was dead of some of her own poisons, and the King, with his three children about him, lived to a happy old age.

  So the wicked were punished, and the good and true lived happy ever after. So may the wicked suffer, and honest folk prosper till the world’s end.

  THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

  THERE lived in Padua a gentleman named Baptista, who had two fair daughters. The eldest, Katharine, was so very cross and ill-tempered, and unmannerly, that no one ever dreamed of marrying her, while her sister, Bianca, was so sweet and pretty, and pleasant-spoken, that more than one suitor asked her father for her hand. But Baptista said the elder daughter must marry first.

  So Bianca’s suitors decided among themselves to try and get some one to marry Katharine—and then the father could at least be got to listen to their suit for Bianca.

  A gentleman from Verona, named Petruchio, was the one they thought of, and, half in jest, they asked him if he would marry Katharine, the disagreeable scold. Much to their surprise he said yes, that was just the sort of wife for him, and if Katharine were handsome and rich, he himself would undertake soon to make her good-tempered.

  Petruchio began by asking Baptista’s permission to pay court to his gentle daughter Katharine—and Baptista was obliged to own that she was anything but gentle. And just then her music master rushed in, complaining that the naughty girl had broken her lute over his head, because he told her she was not playing correctly.

  “Never mind,” said Petruchio, “I love her better than ever, and long to have some chat with her.”

  When Katharine came, he said, “Good-morrow, Kate—for that, I hear, is your name.”

  “You’ve only heard half,” said Katharine, rudely.

  “Oh, no,” said Petruchio, “they call you plain Kate, and bonny Kate, and sometimes Kate the shrew, and so, hearing your mildness praised in every town, and your beauty too, I ask you for my wife.”

  “Your wife!” cried Kate. “Never!” She said some extremely disagreeable things to him, and, I am sorry to say, ended by boxing his ears.

  “If you do that again, I’ll cuff you,” he said quietly; and still protested, with many compliments, that he would marry none but her.

  When Baptista came back, he asked at once—

  “How speed you with my daughter?”

  “How should I speed but well,” replied Petruchio—“how, but well?”

  “How now, daughter Katharine?” the father went on.

  “I don’t think,” said Katharine, angrily, “you are acting a father’s part in wishing me to marry this mad-cap ruffian.”

  “Ah!” said Petruchio, “you and all the world would talk amiss of her. You should see how kind she is to me when we are alone. In short, I will go off to Venice to buy fine things for our wedding—for—kiss me, Kate! we will be married on Sunday.”

  And with that, Katharine flounced out of the room by one door in a violent temper, and he, laughing, went out by the other. But whether she fell in love with Petruchio, or whether she was only glad to meet a man who was not afraid of her, or whether she was flattered that, in spite of her rough words and spiteful usage, he still desired her for his wife—she did indeed marry him on Sunday, as he had sworn she should.

  To vex and humble Katharine’s naughty, proud spirit, he was late at the wedding, and when he came, came wearing such shabby clothes that she was ashamed to be seen with him. His servant was dressed in the same shabby way, and the horses they rode were the sport of everyone they passed.

  And, after the marriage, when should have been the wedding breakfast, Petruchio carried his wife away, not allowing her to eat or drink—saying that she was his now, and he could do as he liked with her.

  And his manner was so violent, and he behaved all through his wedding in so mad and dreadful a manner, that Katharine trembled and went with him. He mounted her on a stumbling, lean, old horse, and they journeyed by rough muddy ways to Petruchio’s house, he scolding and snarling all the way.

  She was terribly tired when she reached her new home, but Petruchio was determined that she should neither eat nor sleep that night, for he had made up his mind to teach his bad-tempered wife a lesson she would never forget.

  So he welcomed her kindly to his house, but when supper was served he found fault with everything—the meat was burnt, he said, and ill-served, and he loved her far too much to let her eat anything but the best. At last Katharine, tired out with her journey, went supperless to bed. Then her husband, still telling her how he loved her, and how anxious he was that she should sleep well, pulled her bed to pieces, throwing pillows and bedclothes on the floor, so that she could not go to bed at all, and still kept growling and scolding at the servants so that Kate might see how unbeautiful a thing ill-temper was.

  The next day, too, Katharine’s food was all found fault with, and caught away before she could touch a mouthful, and she was sick and giddy for want of sleep. Then she said to one of the servants—

  “I pray thee go and get me some repast. I care not what.”

  “What say you to a neat’s foot?” said the servant.

  Katharine said “Yes,” eagerly; but the servant, who was in his master’s secret, said he feared it was not good for hasty-tempered people. Would she like tripe?

  “Bring it me,” said Katharine.

  “I don’t think that is good for hasty-tempered people,” said the servant. “What do you say to a dish of beef and mustard?”

  “I love it,” said Kate.

  “But mustard is too hot.”

  “Why, then, the beef, and let the mustard go,” cried Katharine, who was getting hungrier and hungrier.

  “No,” said the servant, “you must have the mustard, or you get no beef from me.”

  “Then,” cried Katharine, losing patience, “let it be both, or one, or anything thou wilt.”

  “Why, then,” said the servant, “the mustard without the beef!”

  Then Katharine saw he was making fun of her, and boxed his ears.

  Just then Petruchio brought her some food—but she had scarcely begun to satisfy her hunger, before he called for the tailor to bring her new clothes, and the table was cleared, leaving her still hungry. Katharine was pleased with the pretty new dress and cap that the tailor had made for her, but Petruchio found fault with everything, flung the cap and gown on the floor, vowing his dear wife should not wear any such foolish things.

  “I will have them,” cried Katharine. “All gentlewomen wear such caps as these—”

  “When you are gentle you shall have one too,” he answered, “and not till then.” When he had driven away the tailor with angry words—but privately asking his friend to see him paid—Petruchio said—

  “Come, Kate, let’s go to your father’s, shabby as we are, for, as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds, so honor peereth in the meanest habit. It is about seven o’clock now. We shall easily get there by dinner-time.”

  “It’s nearly two,” said Kate, but civilly enough, for she had grown to see that she could not bully her husband, as she had done her father and her sister; “it’s nearly tw
o, and it will be supper-time before we get there.”

  “It shall be seven,” said Petruchio, obstinately, “before I start. Why, whatever I say or do, or think, you do nothing but contradict. I won’t go to-day, and before I do go, it shall be what o’clock I say it is.”

  At last they started for her father’s house. “Look at the moon,” said he.

  “It’s the sun,” said Katharine, and indeed it was.

  “I say it is the moon. Contradicting again! It shall be sun or moon, or whatever I choose, or I won’t take you to your father’s.”

  Then Katharine gave in, once and for all. “What you will have it named,” she said, “it is, and so it shall be so for Katharine.” And so it was, for from that moment Katharine felt that she had met her master, and never again showed her naughty tempers to him, or anyone else.

  So they journeyed on to Baptista’s house, and arriving there, they found all folks keeping Bianca’s wedding feast, and that of another newly married couple, Hortensio and his wife. They were made welcome, and sat down to the feast, and all was merry, save that Hortensio’s wife, seeing Katharine subdued to her husband, thought she could safely say many disagreeable things, that in the old days, when Katharine was free and forward, she would not have dared to say. But Katharine answered with such spirit and such moderation, that she turned the laugh against the new bride.

  After dinner, when the ladies were retired, Baptista joined in a laugh against Petruchio, saying—“Now in good sadness, son Petruchio, I fear you have got the veriest shrew of all.”

  “You are wrong,” said Petruchio; “let me prove it to you. Each of us shall send a message to his wife, desiring her to come to him, and the one whose wife comes most readily shall win a wager which we will agree on.”

  The others said yes readily enough, for each thought his own wife the most dutiful, and each thought he was quite sure to win the wager.

  They proposed a wager of twenty crowns.

  “Twenty crowns,” said Petruchio, “I’ll venture so much on my hawk or hound, but twenty times as much upon my wife.”

  “A hundred then,” cried Lucentio, Bianca’s husband.

  “Content,” cried the others.

  Then Lucentio sent a message to the fair Bianca bidding her to come to him. And Baptista said he was certain his daughter would come. But the servant coming back, said—

  “Sir, my mistress is busy, and she cannot come.”’

  “There’s an answer for you,” said Petruchio.

  “You may think yourself fortunate if your wife does not send you a worse.”

  “I hope, better,” Petruchio answered. Then Hortensio said—

  “Go and entreat my wife to come to me at once.”

  “Oh—if you entreat her,” said Petruchio.

  “I am afraid,” answered Hortensio, sharply, “do what you can, yours will not be entreated.”

  But now the servant came in, and said—

  “She says you are playing some jest, she will not come.”

  “Better and better,” cried Petruchio; “now go to your mistress and say I command her to come to me.”

  They all began to laugh, saying they knew what her answer would be, and that she would not come.

  Then suddenly Baptista cried—

  “Here comes Katharine!” And sure enough—there she was.

  “What do you wish, sir?” she asked her husband.

  “Where are your sister and Hortensio’s wife?”

  “Talking by the parlor fire.”

  “Fetch them here.”

  When she was gone to fetch them, Lucentio said—

  “Here is a wonder!”

  “I wonder what it means,” said Hortensio.

  “It means peace,” said Petruchio, “and love, and quiet life.”

  “Well,” said Baptista, “you have won the wager, and I will add another twenty thousand crowns to her dowry—another dowry for another daughter—for she is as changed as if she were some one else.”

  So Petruchio won his wager, and had in Katharine always a loving wife and a true, and now he had broken her proud and angry spirit he loved her well, and there was nothing ever but love between those two. And so they lived happy ever afterwards.

  HAMLET

  HAMLET was the only son of the King of Denmark. He loved his father and mother dearly—and was happy in the love of a sweet lady named Ophelia. Her father, Polonius, was the King’s Chamberlain.

  While Hamlet was away studying at Wittenberg, his father died. Young Hamlet hastened home in great grief to hear that a serpent had stung the King, and that he was dead. The young Prince had loved his father tenderly—so you may judge what he felt when he found that the Queen, before yet the King had been laid in the ground a month, had determined to marry again—and to marry the dead King’s brother.

  Hamlet refused to put off his mourning for the wedding.

  “It is not only the black I wear on my body,” he said, “that proves my loss. I wear mourning in my heart for my dead father. His son at least remembers him, and grieves still.”

  Then said Claudius, the King’s brother, “This grief is unreasonable. Of course you must sorrow at the loss of your father, but—”

  “Ah,” said Hamlet, bitterly, “I cannot in one little month forget those I love.”

  With that the Queen and Claudius left him, to make merry over their wedding, forgetting the poor good King who had been so kind to them both.

  And Hamlet, left alone, began to wonder and to question as to what he ought to do. For he could not believe the story about the snake-bite. It seemed to him all too plain that the wicked Claudius had killed the King, so as to get the crown and marry the Queen. Yet he had no proof, and could not accuse Claudius.

  And while he was thus thinking came Horatio, a fellow student of his, from Wittenberg.

  “What brought you here?” asked Hamlet, when he had greeted his friend kindly.

  “I came, my lord, to see your father’s funeral.”

  “I think it was to see my mother’s wedding,” said Hamlet, bitterly. “My father! We shall not look upon his like again.”

  “My lord,” answered Horatio, “I think I saw him yesternight.”

  Then, while Hamlet listened in surprise, Horatio told how he, with two gentlemen of the guard, had seen the King’s ghost on the battlements. Hamlet went that night, and true enough, at midnight, the ghost of the King, in the armor he had been wont to wear, appeared on the battlements in the chill moonlight. Hamlet was a brave youth. Instead of running away from the ghost he spoke to it—and when it beckoned him he followed it to a quiet place, and there the ghost told him that what he had suspected was true. The wicked Claudius had indeed killed his good brother the King, by dropping poison into his ear as he slept in his orchard in the afternoon.

  “And you,” said the ghost, “must avenge this cruel murder—on my wicked brother. But do nothing against the Queen—for I have loved her, and she is thy mother. Remember me.”

  Then seeing the morning approach, the ghost vanished.

  “Now,” said Hamlet, “there is nothing left but revenge. Remember thee—I will remember nothing else—books, pleasure, youth—let all go—and your commands alone live on my brain.”

  So when his friends came back he made them swear to keep the secret of the ghost, and then went in from the battlements, now grey with mingled dawn and moonlight, to think how he might best avenge his murdered father.

  The shock of seeing and hearing his father’s ghost made him feel almost mad, and for fear that his uncle might notice that he was not himself, he determined to hide his mad longing for revenge under a pretended madness in other matters.

  And when he met Ophelia, who loved him—and to whom he had given gifts, and letters, and many loving words—he behaved so wildly to her, that she could not but think him mad. For she loved him so that she could not believe he would be as cruel as this, unless he were quite mad. So she told her father, and showed him a pretty letter from
Hamlet. And in the letter was much folly, and this pretty verse—

  “Doubt that the stars are fire;

  Doubt that the sun doth move;

  Doubt truth to be a liar;

  But never doubt I love.”

  And from that time everyone believed that the cause of Hamlet’s supposed madness was love.

  Poor Hamlet was very unhappy. He longed to obey his father’s ghost—and yet he was too gentle and kindly to wish to kill another man, even his father’s murderer. And sometimes he wondered whether, after all, the ghost spoke truly.

  Just at this time some actors came to the Court, and Hamlet ordered them to perform a certain play before the King and Queen. Now, this play was the story of a man who had been murdered in his garden by a near relation, who afterwards married the dead man’s wife.

  You may imagine the feelings of the wicked King, as he sat on his throne, with the Queen beside him and all his Court around, and saw, acted on the stage, the very wickedness that he had himself done. And when, in the play, the wicked relation poured poison into the ear of the sleeping man, the wicked Claudius suddenly rose, and staggered from the room—the Queen and others following.

  Then said Hamlet to his friends—

  “Now I am sure the ghost spoke true. For if Claudius had not done this murder, he could not have been so distressed to see it in a play.”

  Now the Queen sent for Hamlet, by the King’s desire, to scold him for his conduct during the play, and for other matters; and Claudius, wishing to know exactly what happened, told old Polonius to hide himself behind the hangings in the Queen’s room. And as they talked, the Queen got frightened at Hamlet’s rough, strange words, and cried for help, and Polonius, behind the curtain, cried out too. Hamlet, thinking it was the King who was hidden there, thrust with his sword at the hangings, and killed, not the King, but poor old Polonius.

  So now Hamlet had offended his uncle and his mother, and by bad hap killed his true love’s father.

  “Oh, what a rash and bloody deed is this,” cried the Queen.

  And Hamlet answered bitterly, “Almost as bad as to kill a king, and marry his brother.” Then Hamlet told the Queen plainly all his thoughts and how he knew of the murder, and begged her, at least, to have no more friendship or kindness of the base Claudius, who had killed the good King. And as they spoke the King’s ghost again appeared before Hamlet, but the Queen could not see it. So when the ghost had gone, they parted.