All the World's a Stage essay
Notes on All the World’s a Stage
In this poem, which forms a part of the speech made by Jaques in Shakespeare’s play As You Like It, Act II Sc. 7, a deeply insightful comment has been made on the seven stages of a human being. The poet seems to have uniquely squeezed eternity into a grain of sand, and has made us aware of the various phases of the growth and decay of the human being.
According to the speaker Jaques, the world is merely a stage and the human beings are mere players, making their entrances and exits, and one single individual has to enact different parts and his acts can be categorized into seven ages. The first stage is of the little child crying feebly in the arms of the nurse. The second stage sees the same infant developed into a mildly complaining schoolboy, ready with his bag and his bright morning face, moving unwillingly towards his school at snail’s pace. In the third phase, the same child has grown up into a young lover singing a sad ballad directed towards his mistress. The adolescent love of this person seems to be so overpowering that his sighs remind one of a furnace. The fourth age sees this young man changed into an active soldier making queer promises and taking all sorts of risks only for the sake of honour, which to Jaques is only “a bubble reputation” (an apt metaphor indeed). The fifth stage finds this individual having given up such a risky life of adventure and settling down into the peace of the middle age, as a justice with a “fair round belly” that symbolically hints at the prosperity that he has acquired. He is full of wise sayings and maxims, and he is fond of highlighting the commonplace things as proofs of his wisdom. His eyes are strict and his beard is formal-both these signifying that he is indeed a person who has achieved the distance of respectability. In the sixth stage, the same respectable judge, so physically prosperous shrinks into a lean and thin, foolish old man, a funny caricature. The spectacles on
In this poem, which forms a part of the speech made by Jaques in Shakespeare’s play As You Like It, Act II Sc. 7, a deeply insightful comment has been made on the seven stages of a human being. The poet seems to have uniquely squeezed eternity into a grain of sand, and has made us aware of the various phases of the growth and decay of the human being.
According to the speaker Jaques, the world is merely a stage and the human beings are mere players, making their entrances and exits, and one single individual has to enact different parts and his acts can be categorized into seven ages. The first stage is of the little child crying feebly in the arms of the nurse. The second stage sees the same infant developed into a mildly complaining schoolboy, ready with his bag and his bright morning face, moving unwillingly towards his school at snail’s pace. In the third phase, the same child has grown up into a young lover singing a sad ballad directed towards his mistress. The adolescent love of this person seems to be so overpowering that his sighs remind one of a furnace. The fourth age sees this young man changed into an active soldier making queer promises and taking all sorts of risks only for the sake of honour, which to Jaques is only “a bubble reputation” (an apt metaphor indeed). The fifth stage finds this individual having given up such a risky life of adventure and settling down into the peace of the middle age, as a justice with a “fair round belly” that symbolically hints at the prosperity that he has acquired. He is full of wise sayings and maxims, and he is fond of highlighting the commonplace things as proofs of his wisdom. His eyes are strict and his beard is formal-both these signifying that he is indeed a person who has achieved the distance of respectability. In the sixth stage, the same respectable judge, so physically prosperous shrinks into a lean and thin, foolish old man, a funny caricature. The spectacles on