The World is Our Oyster

Wield the Sword of Words and Its Riches Will Be Found Within Books

Shakespeare is credited with the origin of the idiom “the world is your oyster”. It first appeared in his play ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’. Oysters easily open with a knife to reveal the pearls found inside.

In the play, the character Pistol says, “Why then the world’s mine oyster, Which I with sword will open.” With that, the world met the future idiom.

I was never a fan of his writings. They were written in the same language style as the King James Version of the Bible. To me, trying to read and understand either was like self-inflicted language torture.

My niece devoured Shakespeare. I often wished she’d been around when I was trudging through his works in school. She could read his works and distill them into easy to understand narrative. She cracked the Shakespeare oyster.

Books have always been my oysters.

I struggled to learn to read. Sight reading was not a learning method for me. It was when my mother took hold and taught me phonics the written word was finally revealed in all its glory.

I was in grade four when I picked up my first novel to read. It was Catherine Marshall’s “Christy”. I read all 550 or so pages. My teacher tried…