by John Barden

Created on: January 17, 2009

"So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,/So long lives this, and this gives life to thee." Sonnet XVIII

When the Rosetta Stone (the original Rosetta Stone, not the expensive language program named for it) was discovered in Egypt in 1799 by the French, it proved to be the key to understanding ancient hieroglyphics - once thought utterly undecipherable. The tablet, dating back to 196 B.C., contained an edict issued by Ptolemy V re-establishing the tax-exempt status of the temples. It was written in the three widely used languages of the day: hieroglyphic, Demotic and classical Greek. The rest, as they say, is history.

If we want to read Beowulf (Old English) or Chaucer's Caterbury Tales (Middle English) today, we rely on scholarly translations which often distance us from the original flavor of the author and his times. But if we read Shakespeare, we are fortunate to come into direct contact with his original words - text and context - and with a little effort and direction can fully appreciate his meaning and the magnificent way he expressed himself. The difference here is akin to having only a critical commentary on a poem, or the poem itself.

I remember in the fall quarter of my second year of high school being assigned Othello as a month-long literary project and counting for a large percentage of my grade. That first night, when I cracked open the paperback edition and began to read, I thought there was something terribly wrong, that like many other esteemed authors from the past, Shakespeare had been greatly overrated. I fully got Mark Twain's quip that, 'A classic is something everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.' I couldn't understand a thing that I was reading. So I tossed the book aside, put on my trusted headphones and pounded my brain with some acid rock, intending to pick up the 'Cliff Notes' first chance I got.

Next thing I knew, my father, an English teacher and a quiet man, was pounding on my door and screaming at the top of his lungs for me to let him in. When I finally heard him yelling and opened the door, he handed me a recording of the play, with James Earl Jones as the crazed Moor himself, and simply said, "If you read along with the actors, it might prove useful."

It was if he had handed me the Rosetta Stone to William Shakespeare. It opened up a rich linguistic world to me and gave me such a profound love and appreciation of the English language that has enlightened and informed my life ever since.

I next took on Hamlet, which I loved, and found myself scraping money together to get myself a hardbound copy of the complete works, so voluminous they had to print it on paper thin as tissue. I devoured everything he had ever written and started imitating his sonnets - three quatrains of alternating rhyme followed by a closing, dramatic couplet. He became so comprehensible to me that I even passed on a rock concert or two to take in a play running at Shakespeare in the Park in New York City.

And even when I found a play, like King Lear, too big perhaps for the stage, I delighted in reading its every word, savoring its majesty and basking in the tragic glory of being human.

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