Abbreviated Shakespeare is a website that substantially condenses many of Shakespeare's plays, combining features from two associated websites: www.simplifiedshakespeare.com and www.thebestofshakespeare.com. But in this site, each shortened version of each play is limited to a synopsis and a paragraph about each principal character. Inserted as links in each synopsis for each play are what we call situations. These situations for us represent key thoughts that Shakespeare was distributing to his audiences through his plays and are the reason these websites were put together.