CHAPTER VIII.
The Tales from Shakespeare.—Letters to Sarah Stoddart.
1806.—Æt. 42.
Once begun, the Tales from Shakespeare were worked at with spirit and rapidity. By May 10th Charles writes to Manning:—
"[Mary] says you saw her writings about the other day, and she wishes you should know what they are. She is doing for Godwin's bookseller twenty of Shakespeare's plays, to be made into children's tales. Six are already done by her; to wit, The Tempest, A Winter's Tale, Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado about Nothing, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Cymbeline. The Merchant of Venice is in forwardness. I have done Othello and Macbeth, and mean to do all the tragedies. I think it will be popular among the little people, besides money. It is to bring in sixty guineas. Mary has done them capitally I think you'd think."
"Godwin's bookseller" was really Godwin himself, who at his wife's urgent entreaty had just started a "Magazine" of children's books in Hanway Street, hoping thus to add to his precarious earnings as an author. His own name was in such ill odour with the
