Shakespeare’s Romances
The majority of the romances written by William Shakespeare that I have translated into Standard English for this book, Shakespeare’s Romances, have been selected from The Folio Society Limited Edition publication of The Norton Facsimile (Second edition) of the 1623 First Folio publication of Shakespeare’s plays. Because Pericles and The Two Noble Cousins were not included in the First Folio I have used other sources for these two plays.
The plays I have chosen to group as romances have a greater emphasis on romantic love. The comic characters that they do have, are subordinate to the romance. These plays emphasize chivalric love.
- All’s Well That Ends Well
- As You Like it
- Measure for Measure
- Pericles
- The Merchant of Venice
- The Tempest
- The Two Gentlemen from Verona
- The Two Noble Cousins
- The Winter’s Tale
Jeanne Arthur
Jeanne Arthur BA (Honours Drama) is a retired teacher of Drama, English and History who was inspired to translate Shakespeare’s plays into modern English by her students who asked questions about the plays that were not easy to answer even though she had an honors degree in Drama from Flinders University and thirty years of teaching Drama. Retirement gave Jeanne the time and opportunity to write these translations to answer her students’ questions and to allow her to reflect on Shakespeare’s plays at a leisurely pace. She believes the outcome of this experience will be helpful to readers, performers and theatre workers as it brings many years of working on Shakespeare’s plays and poetry to clarify their meaning and create immediately accessible texts supported by thorough explanatory notes about Shakespeare’s world.
