Shakespeare's major plays are not abridged or summarised in these editions, but are paraphrased line-by-line in modern English to create a prose narrative that also incorporates stage directions and dialogue. The flavour of the original is retained by the use of iambic pentameter and rhyme, but higher flights of symbolism and poetic allusion are omitted and Elizabethan usage is stripped away altogether. Making the plays unfold as if they were novels, the books in this series are carried along by the intensity of Shakespeare's page-turning plots and the rich development of character, mood, and setting.