Originally published in 1910 in the larger “Warner’s Synopsis of Books, Ancient and Modern,” this Kindle edition, equivalent in length to a physical book of approximately 55 pages, summarizes the plots of all of Shakespeare’s comedies, tragedies, and histories.
CONTENTS
All’s Well That Ends Well
Antony and Cleopatra
As You Like It
The Comedy of Errors
Coriolanus
Cymbeline
Hamlet
Henry IV, Part I
Henry IV, Part II
Henry V
Henry VI (Parts I, II, III)
Henry VIII
Julius Caesar
King John
King Lear
Love’s Labour’s Lost
Macbeth
Measure for Measure
The Merchant of Venice
Merry Wives of Windsor
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Much Ado about Nothing
Othello
Pericles
Richard II
Richard III
Romeo and Juliet
The Taming of the Shrew
The Tempest
Timon of Athens
Titus Andronicus
Troilus and Cressida
Twelfth Night; or, What You Will
Two Gentlemen of Verona
A Winter’s Tale
Sample summary:
“Hamlet” is Shakespeare’s longest and most famous play. It draws when acted as full a house today as it ever did. It is the drama of the intellect, of the soul, of man, of domestic tragedy. Five quarto editions appeared during the poet’s life, the first in 1603. The story, Shakespeare got from an old black-letter quarto, “The Historie of Hamblet,” translated from the French of Belleforest, who in turn translated it from the Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus. Some time in winter (“’tis bitter cold”), the scene opens on a terrace in front of the castle of Kronberg in Elsinore, Denmark. The ghost of his father appears to Hamlet—moody and depressed over his mother’s marriage with Claudius, her brother-in-law. Hamlet learns from his father the fatal secret of his death at the hands of Claudius. He devises the court-play as a trap in which to catch his uncle’s conscience; breaks his engagement with Ophelia; kills the wary old counselor Polonius; and is sent off to England under the escort of the treacherous courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to be put to death. On the way he rises in the night, unseals their murderous commission, rewrites it, and seals it with his father’s ring, having worded it so that they themselves shall be the victims when they reach England. In a fight with pirates Hamlet boards their ship, and is conveyed by them back to Denmark, where he tells his adventures to his faithful friend Horatio. At Ophelia’s grave he encounters Laertes, her brother; and presently, in a fencing bout with him, is killed by Laertes’ poisoned sword, but not before he has stabbed his treacherous uncle and forced the fatal cup of poison down his throat. His mother Gertrude has just died from accidentally drinking the same poison, prepared by the King for Hamlet. The old threadbare question, “Was Hamlet insane?” is hardly an open question nowadays. The verdict is that he was not. The strain upon his nerves of discovering his father’s murderer, yet in such a manner that he could not prove it (i.e., by the agency of a ghost), was so great that he verges on insanity, and this suggests to him the feigning of it. But if you deprive him wholly of reason, you destroy our interest in the play.
About the author/editor:
Charles Dudley Warner (1829-1900) was an American author, editor, and lecturer. Other works include “The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today” (co-authored with Mark Twain), “My Summer in a Garden,” and “As We Were Saying.”
CONTENTS
All’s Well That Ends Well
Antony and Cleopatra
As You Like It
The Comedy of Errors
Coriolanus
Cymbeline
Hamlet
Henry IV, Part I
Henry IV, Part II
Henry V
Henry VI (Parts I, II, III)
Henry VIII
Julius Caesar
King John
King Lear
Love’s Labour’s Lost
Macbeth
Measure for Measure
The Merchant of Venice
Merry Wives of Windsor
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Much Ado about Nothing
Othello
Pericles
Richard II
Richard III
Romeo and Juliet
The Taming of the Shrew
The Tempest
Timon of Athens
Titus Andronicus
Troilus and Cressida
Twelfth Night; or, What You Will
Two Gentlemen of Verona
A Winter’s Tale
Sample summary:
“Hamlet” is Shakespeare’s longest and most famous play. It draws when acted as full a house today as it ever did. It is the drama of the intellect, of the soul, of man, of domestic tragedy. Five quarto editions appeared during the poet’s life, the first in 1603. The story, Shakespeare got from an old black-letter quarto, “The Historie of Hamblet,” translated from the French of Belleforest, who in turn translated it from the Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus. Some time in winter (“’tis bitter cold”), the scene opens on a terrace in front of the castle of Kronberg in Elsinore, Denmark. The ghost of his father appears to Hamlet—moody and depressed over his mother’s marriage with Claudius, her brother-in-law. Hamlet learns from his father the fatal secret of his death at the hands of Claudius. He devises the court-play as a trap in which to catch his uncle’s conscience; breaks his engagement with Ophelia; kills the wary old counselor Polonius; and is sent off to England under the escort of the treacherous courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to be put to death. On the way he rises in the night, unseals their murderous commission, rewrites it, and seals it with his father’s ring, having worded it so that they themselves shall be the victims when they reach England. In a fight with pirates Hamlet boards their ship, and is conveyed by them back to Denmark, where he tells his adventures to his faithful friend Horatio. At Ophelia’s grave he encounters Laertes, her brother; and presently, in a fencing bout with him, is killed by Laertes’ poisoned sword, but not before he has stabbed his treacherous uncle and forced the fatal cup of poison down his throat. His mother Gertrude has just died from accidentally drinking the same poison, prepared by the King for Hamlet. The old threadbare question, “Was Hamlet insane?” is hardly an open question nowadays. The verdict is that he was not. The strain upon his nerves of discovering his father’s murderer, yet in such a manner that he could not prove it (i.e., by the agency of a ghost), was so great that he verges on insanity, and this suggests to him the feigning of it. But if you deprive him wholly of reason, you destroy our interest in the play.
About the author/editor:
Charles Dudley Warner (1829-1900) was an American author, editor, and lecturer. Other works include “The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today” (co-authored with Mark Twain), “My Summer in a Garden,” and “As We Were Saying.”
