"All the World's a Stage" by William Shakespeare

“All the world’s a stage”

from As You Like It

by William Shakespeare

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages.

At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;

And then the whining school-boy,
with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like
snail

Unwillingly to school.

And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress’ eyebrow.

Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths, and bearded like
the pard,

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick
in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon’s mouth.

And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part.

The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;

His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world
too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly
voice,

Turning again toward childish treble,
pipes

And whistles in his sound.

Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion;

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste,
sans everything.

Shakespeare spent much of his life

concocting dazzling dialogue

and haunting speeches,

and this soliloquy from As You Like It
is no exception.

Here, the speaker distills all of life
into seven stages—

and breathes life into seven characters

with a cacophony of sounds.

Although these figures do not
appear on stage,

each is characterized by the different
noises they release into the world.

The mewling infant and the whining
schoolboy assert their needs plaintively—

but youth makes self-expression
a little more complicated.

There’s the lover burning with lust,

sighing like a furnace;

then the quarrelsome soldier

spouting opinions and ambitions

he hasn't quite thought through.

After those empty words comes the justice

who weighs each one carefully,

and then the rich old man

who sinks back comfortably

and lets his manly voice grow whining
and shrill once again.

Finally, the clamor of life gives way to silence—

and the sibilance, or repetition
of the “S” sound in the final line,

lulls the old man to his final sleep.

Together, these offer an ingenious
soundtrack to the cycle of life—

giving us a way not only to visualize
the passage of time,

but to hear it.

And when it’s read or rehearsed,

the speech once again comes alive—

reverberating through the ages,

booming across the stage,

and echoing in our ears.