I discovered William Shakespeare underground. It was my senior year of high school and we were offered an elective course in Shakespeare by a new teacher, Mrs. Carney. The class met in a basement classroom, one of those old rooms at Damien High School in Southern California, with small windows up near the ceiling. It was a typing classroom, so it was filled with small desks which barely held these enormous Adler Electric typewriters. There was no place to open a book, except on the keyboard or your own lap.

Mrs. Carney was a middle-aged woman with a very kind manner. Each day, she carried in a portable record player and we listened to several Shakespeare plays from these old LPs. We read along in the Folger Shakespeare Library edition paperbacks. These little books fascinated me. They had the text of the play on one side, and on the opposite page, they listed the Elizabethan words or ideas which we, kids of the 1970s, might not grasp. I specifically remember a sketch of a mandrake plant, which the Elizabethans believed would drive you mad if you pulled it out of the ground and heard its human-like scream. I also recall an explanation of the Elizabethan belief that washing your hands in a silver basin, in the light of a full moon, would cure you of warts!

On the cover of each book was a photograph of the bas-relief sculptures at the Folger Shakespeare Library, like the one in the photograph above. In the sculpture above, Hamlet glares over his mother Gertrude’s stare, into the eyes of his murderous uncle Claudius. Hamlet, ever the student, carries his cloak in one hand and a book in the other.

It was in this unlikely setting, a cold basement typing classroom, that I remember catching fire with a love of Shakespeare.  Led by Mrs. Carney’s quiet and gentle way, I found myself amazed by Shakespeare’s ability to create characters so real, so wonderful, so loving, so hateful. I also found myself intrigued by his ability to use images in the words of his characters, which enhanced the themes he was trying to create. I still recall the images of candles burning down to nothing in “Julius Caesar,” as civil society in Rome crumbled. The images of light and dark in “Othello” similarly grabbed me.

Isn’t this what Shakespeare has done for audiences and readers for the last 400 years? His plays function like a mirror held up to our own faces. We see our loves, our fears, our desires for power and control, all present in his characters. Yet we know, we are really watching our very selves.

It fascinates me too, that we know so little about the man himself. The records in Trinity Church, Stratford, are nearly the only historical record of his life. If his friends had not published the collection of his plays shortly after his death, we would know almost nothing of him. Recently, there has been some thrilling information about newly discovered paintings which might be of the Bard himself. Though a researcher at the Folger told me recently that he still thinks the Chandos Portrait is the only real image we have of him. That is a painting I have always loved. Its amber hues show a man, casual, shirt open, hair hanging plainly, unaffected, earring in his left year. It is a portrait with more questions than answers.

Perhaps this is Shakespeare’s gift to us. He raises questions we would do well to ponder: Who are we? Why are we here? How will we make our world? Aren’t those good questions for people of every time and place?