Charles and Mary Lamb's Ambivalent Adaptation Attitudes in Their Tales from Shakespeare

『셰익스피어 이야기』에 나타난 찰스 램과 메리 램의 이중적 각색 태도

Tales from Shakespeare, written by Charles and Mary Lamb in 1807, is an adaptation of Shakespeare's plays which was intended for children. Shakespeare's poetic language is transmitted into prose, which enables children to easily read his works. Charles and Mary Lamb collaborated in adapting Shakespeare's plays, but they undertook separate duties which revealed different attitudes in their approach to the adaptation. This dissertation examines Mary Lamb's adaption of Shakespeare's problem play All's Well That Ends Well and Charles Lamb's adaption of Shakespeare' tragedy King Lear, with an adapted pattern focusing on the plot and character. Charles Lamb stressed the "imagination of a fairy tale," which was against the trend in children's literature of the time, while Mary Lamb stressed "the moral and didactic element." Mary Lamb was concerned with the education of female children in the early nineteenth-century. As a result, the Tales presents "a double movement" or perspective, which stresses didactic elements, as well as imagination. These ambivalent attitudes caused critical debates in the nineteenth-century. However, the Lambs defended criticism against "the double movement," suspecting themselves to be "no bigger than a child," from the viewpoint of "the imagination," and reading the Tales to be effective at "making a child a virtuous man," from the viewpoint of "an education."