All the World's 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.

Text

• All the world's a stage,
  And all the men and women, meerely Players;
  They haue their Exits and their Entrances,
  And one man in his time playes many parts,
  His Acts being seuen ages. At first the Infant,
  Mewling, and puking in the Nurses armes:
  Then, the whining Schoole-boy with his Satchell
  And shining morning face, creeping like snaile
  Vnwillingly to schoole. And then the Louer,
  Sighing like Furnace, with a wofull ballad
  Made to his Mistresse eye-brow. Then, a Soldier,
  Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the Pard,
  Ielous in honor, sodaine, and quicke in quarrell,
  Seeking the bubble Reputation
  Euen in the Canons mouth: And then, the Iustice
  In faire round belly, with good Capon lin'd,
  With eyes seuere, and beard of formall cut,
  Full of wise sawes, and moderne instances,
  And so he playes his part. The sixt age shifts
  Into the leane and slipper'd Pantaloone,
  With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side,
  His youthfull hose well sau'd, a world too wide,
  For his shrunke shanke, and his bigge manly voice,
  Turning againe toward childish trebble pipes,
  And whistles in his sound. Last Scene of all,
  That ends this strange euentfull historie,
  Is second childishnesse, and meere obliuion,
  Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans euery thing.
  • As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII, lines 139–166 (First Folio)

Antecedents

• Dies annorum nostrorum in ipsis septuaginta anni si autem multum octoginta anni et quod amplius est labor et dolor quoniam transivimus cito et avolavimus
  (Dies annorum nostrorum in ipsis septuaginta anni si autem in potentatibus octoginta anni et amplius eorum labor et dolor quoniam supervenit mansuetudo et corripiemur)
  • Psalm 89:10 (Vulgate)
• The dayes of oure age are thre score yeares and ten: and though men be so stronge that they come to foure score yeares, yet is theyr strength then but laboure and sorowe: so soone passeth it awaye, and we are gone.
  • Psalm 90:10 (Great Bible)
• The time of our life is threescore years and ten, and if they be of strength, fourscore years: yet their strength is but labor and sorrow: for it is cut off quickly, and we flee away.
  • Psalm 90:10 (Geneva Bible)
• Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures; yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away."
  • Psalm 90:10 (NIV)

• A boy, before he cometh to man’s estate, and while he is still a child, getteth and loseth his rampart of teeth within the first seven years. When god bringeth the second seven to a close, the signs of budding manhood begin to show. In the third period, a downy beard appeareth, though the limbs have not reached their full growth, and the boyish bloom of the complexion fadeth. In the fourth period of seven years, every man is at the prime of his physical strength. ... The fifth period is the season for a man to bethink him of marriage and seek offspring against the future. In the sixth, experience of every sort carrieth his mind on to perfection, and he feeleth no longer the same inclination to the wild pranks of youth. In the seventh seven, he is at his prime in mind and tongue, and also in the eighth, the two together making fourteen years. In the ninth period, though he still retaineth some force, he is feebler both in wisdom and in speech and faileth of great achievement. If a man attaineth to the full measure of the tenth period, the fate of death, if it come upon him, cometh not untimely.
  • Solon, Fragment 27/15 (quoted in Philo, On the Creation of the World 104); Ivan M. Linforth, tr. Solon the Athenian (1919), p. 147
    • Aristotle mentiones the practice of "the poets, who measure men’s age by periods of seven years" (Politics, VII, xiv, 11)

Influence and parody

• Seven ages, first puking and mewling,
  Then very pissed off with one's schooling,
    Then fucks, and then fights,
    Then judging chaps' rights;
  Then sitting in slippers; then drooling.
  • Attributed to Victor Gray in The Penguin Book of Limericks (1983), p. 130, and to Robert Conquest by Kingsley Amis, Memoirs (1991), p. 143