BEAUTIFUL STORIES FROM SHAKESPEARE
By E. Nesbit
PREFACE
The writings of Shakespeare have been justly termed "the richest, the
purest, the fairest, that genius uninspired ever penned."
Shakespeare instructed by delighting. His plays alone (leaving mere
science out of the question), contain more actual wisdom than the
whole body of English learning. He is the teacher of all good-- pity,
generosity, true courage, love. His bright wit is cut out "into little
stars." His solid masses of knowledge are meted out in morsels and
proverbs, and thus distributed, there is scarcely a corner of the
English-speaking world to-day which he does not illuminate, or a cottage
which he does not enrich. His bounty is like the sea, which, though
often unacknowledged, is everywhere felt. As his friend, Ben Jonson,
wrote of him, "He was not of an age but for all time." He ever kept the
highroad of human life whereon all travel. He did not pick out by-paths
of feeling and sentiment.
