“All The World’s A Stage”

All the world’s a stage is a phrase that was used in the William Shakespeare play As You Like It , in which the main character Jaques say the phrase and then explains it. Jaques explains the phrase as life is a play and we are all acting out the play. Which if you think about, a play is a good way to describe life. It has it’s ups and downs, there are exits and entrances, the scenery changes, and so on. It’s easy to see the world as a stage because that would mean that we are all characters in a play.

In Jaques monologue he describes the seven stages of age. You first have the infant crying, which symbolizes being an infant and toddler. Then the complaining schoolboy, who is our childhood age, then a lover, which describes a teenager. The bearded soldier represents us as young adults and then wise justice is us as older more wiser adult. The old man stage is what happens when we reach a certain age, we can’t do the things we use to and we are then reverted back to being a child again. Which is why the last stage is our second childhood. We lose our teeth, we’re weak, and we need help like we once did as a child.

We all know that life is hard and that it can be even more difficult to understand. The monologue in As You Like It is one of the most honest ways to look at life. It’s not sugar coated or tries to gives you the meaning of life but it tells you how a person is seen in the world. It also tells us about ourselves, and what to expect as we go through the stages in life. William Shakespeare used the metaphor of a play for this poem in As You Like It because that is what Shakespeare knew, he knew how to write a play and after writing so many, you would probably think about life as a play as well. In fact that is how most writers get the story that they tell, by looking at events that are happening around them. Life is interesting and when you want to go see a play or movie you want to be interested and entertained. So next time you are going to complain about your life treat is as a stage and improvise on it.