I can confirm that such a thing exists, because I once owned such a book, though I can’t give you any specific detail about it because it was probably 20 years ago and I have no idea where it has ended up since then and my memory is a bit fuzzy.

I was in probably about 5th or 6th grade, but a pretty advanced reader, and I don’t remember where I picked it up, but maybe that might give you some idea where I might have looked for books. The majority of books I had back then either came from Barnes and Noble or scholastic book fairs. It was definitely a softcover book, and I’m fairly certain the cover was black with one of the usual portraits of Shakespeare you’ve probably seen in 1000 different places. I am far from certain but if I had to guess it may have been published by penguin.

I believe more or less all of the dialogue from the plays was there and mostly intact, but padded out with extra descriptions and such so that it read like a regular story and not a play.

I want to say it had a couple of the better known plays, but there’s a chance it only had Romeo and Juliet, my memory is very fuzzy on this.

Dialogue was still very Shakespearean, so you do have to be willing to wade through that a bit, but it was definitely still far more approachable than as a play.