All The Worlds A Stage

"All the world's a stage" is the phrase that begins a monologue from William Shakespeare's pastoral comedy “As You Like It,” spoken by the melancholy Jaques in Act II Scene VII Line 139. The speech compares the world to a stage and life to a play and catalogues the seven stages of a man's life, sometimes referred to as the Seven Ages of Man.

Transcript

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 schoolboy,

With his satchel and shining morning face,

Creeping like snail unwilling to school.

And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace with a woeful ballad made to his mistress's eyebrow.

Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,

Jealous in honor,

Sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation.

Then in the cannon's mouth.

And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good cape unlined,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws in modern instances.

And so he plays his part.

The sixth age shifts into the lean and slippered pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side.

His youthful hose,

Well saved,

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.

His second childness in mere oblivion,

Sans teeth,

Sans eyes,

Sans taste,

Sans everything.