Lamb family defined by literacy and lunacy
Since its first edition in 1807,
”
Tales From Shakespeare
”
has never been out of print.
Lamb family defined by literacy and lunacy
Since its first edition in 1807, “Tales From Shakespeare” has never been out of print. It was written to introduce children to the works of Shakespeare in language they could understand and has been used by older readers to familiarize themselves with his plays.
The collaboration of Charles Lamb and his sister, Mary Lamb, tells the story of 20 of Shakespeare’s 37 plays, keeping the original language intact when possible so readers would be encouraged to read the plays when reaching adulthood.
The book never hints at the tragedy which changed the course of the authors’ lives, one so devastating that it might have rivaled the plays themselves.
Charles Lamb came home on Sept. 22, 1796 to the second-story apartment in London at which he, his parents, sister and aunt lived to find a crowd gathered outside. He ran upstairs and saw two constables, his mother dead with a kitchen knife protruding from her heart, and his father prostrate on the floor with open wounds on his forehead.
The constables stood stolidly next to a chair on which Mary Lamb sat, staring into space. Charles went to her, took her hands in his and said, “Mary, it’s Charles. Please, Mary.”
With a start she came to herself, regarded the horror of the scene she had wrought, and buried her face in her brother’s shoulder.
For a time she was committed to a mental hospital called St. Mary’s of Bethlehem, whose Cockney-corrupted name was Bedlam. Charles swore to be responsible for her care and conduct for as long as necessary.
Because he had a responsible job as an accountant at the British East India Company, and perhaps with the influence of some powerful friends, he won her release. He knew what the custody entailed, and sent word to a young woman he had hoped to marry to find her happiness without him.
Mary, 10 years his senior, was lucid and happy for long periods, but they never went anywhere without taking a restraining garment for her should it be needed. They maintained a literary salon at which poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt and others gathered.
Coleridge had great respect for her writing ability. In a critique of her book, “Mrs. Leicester’s School,” which dealt with motherless children, he predicted it would be regarded as a rich jewel in English literature. Modern psychiatrists might have seen it as a means of Mary working out her guilt and grief.
From time to time Charles suffered depression and was committed briefly to a mental hospital. Whenever he was released, Mary cared for him. His many essays, submitted to The London Magazine under his pen name of Elia, are still widely read today.
Charles died at 59 in the final days of 1834, and was interred at All Saints Churchyard. Mary lived until May 1847, sometimes cared for by a family and sometimes in an asylum.
After her death she was buried next to her brother.
