Excerpt from Stories of Shakespeare's Comedies It seems almost a sacrilege to present merely the framework - the dry bones - of those world-famed masterpieces of diction and character drawing, Shakespeare's Plays; yet, for their right understanding and enjoyment, it is useful to disentangle the often intricate and confused substructures upon which they are reared, which (with one possible exception) were taken by the poet from earlier plays and transformed and transfigured by his genius. To familiarise one's self with the main outlines of the plots or stories, and to refresh and clarify ones memory in regard to the characters and action, leaves one free to appreciate in full the beauty, charm, and force of the complete works, either when seen and heard on the stage, or read and re-read in the study. To the student of literature, the theatre-goer, and all worshippers at the shrine of the master poet, we therefore offer in these pages bald but fairly complete outlines, which follow closely the action of the plays, and which for the sake of clearness and brevity have been left free from criticism, comment, and all save the scantiest quotations, although the temptation to insert whole passages proved almost irresistible. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.