THE ROYAL SCHOOL SERIES. A NEW SERIES OF EDUCATIONAL WORKS NOW PUBLISHING. THE GEOGRAPHY AND ATLAS COMBINED. JUNIOR CLASS-BOOK. Con taining a Complete Geography, with Eighteen Full-coloured Maps, and Numerous Sectional Maps and Diagrams. Small Quarto. Price 1s. 6d. A SENIOR CLASS-BOOK, on the same plan, nearly ready. DR. COLLIER'S HISTORIES OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE 1. JUNIOR CLASS-BOOK, with Copious Questions, 208 pages. Price is. 6d. THE SHAKESPEARE READER, containing the Twelve Greatest Works of Shakespeare. In Three Books. Each Book, containing Four Plays, with Copious Notes, price is. 3d.; or the Three Books in One, price 3s. 6d. ... THE MILTON READER, with Copious Notes. Price 2s. 6d. Other Works in preparation. T. NELSON AND SONS, LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK. GENERAL PREFACE. 66 THIS work pretends to no more than its title-a SHAKESPEARE READER"-implies. Primarily, it was intended to contain merely a selection of passages from the Plays of Shakespeare, which were suited for reading and recitation, in schools or in the family circle. But it was thought that greater interest would attach to the work, and that it might be made to serve more important purposes, if these passages were woven, however slenderly, into the narrative of the Plays in which they occur. The idea thus suggested necessitated a limitation in the number of Plays included in the work; and in making this selection, those Plays have been preferred which seemed best adapted for educational purposes. The selection embraces, at the same time, the very greatest works of Shakespeare:-of the Tragedies Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Julius Caesar, and Coriolanus; of the Histories-King John, Richard II., Richard III., The First Part of King Henry IV., and King Henry VIII.; of the Comedies-The Merchant of Venice, and The Tempest. In abridging the Plays for the purposes contemplated in the plan of the work, only so much has been given in each case as was required to make an intelligible narrative; and all such passages and expressions as would have rendered the work unsuitable for perusal in public classes have been carefully avoided. Notes have been appended to each Play, to elucidate obscure passages, to explain historical allusions and peculiar or difficult |