In order to get the full flavour of All the World's a Stage, it is necessary to know the speaker and the occasion in which he makes this speech. Jacques, in As You Like It, is a gloomy, mocking philosopher, who finds nothing good in men or the world. He is witty and gentle at heart, and this makes his mockery pleasant. In the present speech he does not draw the seven scenes of life as they actually are; he uses the art of the cartoon. He gives us amusing caricatures, which are purely funny at first but become bitter towards the end.
Jacques is a courtier; and therefore the middle caricatures in his description refer to a courtier's career. He and other courtiers are followers of a duke who has been driven from his throne by his brother. The duke goes to live with his followers in the Forest of Arden. They are about to sit down to a meal one day when a young man of good birth hunger to do this. The duke then tells his companions that theirs is not the only sad drama in this theatre of the world. Jacques takes the Duke's metaphor and gives it a comical turn.
Each of us is an actor, he says, in a drama of human life. That drama consists of seven acts. First there is the infant, crying and vomiting in his nurse's arms. He grows up into a school-boy who complains and pleads against going to school and creeps like a snail on his way there, each morning, with his bag of books and his well-scrubbed face. Time passes and he becomes a youth, and falls in love, and spends his time sighing loudly for the love of his lady, and writing grand poems about her slightest features. From love his interest changes into war, as he grows to manhood, and he goes to battle to gain fame as a soldier. He wears a bushy beard that almost covers his face, and he uses bad words and curses from foreign languages. He is quarrelsome and ready to suspect that others are insulting him. In an instant his sword is out for a fight. He goes after fame which is uncertain and short-lived and risks his life to win it. In course of time he gets tired of this settles down in the lazy, comfortable life of a magistrate. He becomes fat and his middle grows out into a paunch which is well lined with the chickens he has eaten, and which he probably got as bribes. He puts on a strict look, in court, quotes stale proverbs and gives silly examples. From well-fed importance the middle-aged man declines into elder lines and retirement. He stays at home, and treasures the clothes of his younger days, now useless to them. He looks like a clown with his spectacles on his nose and a bag at his belt in which he carries what he needs. He goes about all the time in slippers, for he does not like to go out of the house. The world seems too large, and distances too great for his feeble legs. The loud bold voice his manhood becomes the girlish treble of childhood. His breath whistles while he speaks. In the last scene of life the old man becomes a child again and loses his memory. His senses weaken; slight, taste, hearing gradually die. He is, in fact, a walking corpse already, and death only puts a conclusion to his dying which begins much earlier.
Each of us is an actor, he says, in a drama of human life. That drama consists of seven acts. First there is the infant, crying and vomiting in his nurse's arms. He grows up into a school-boy who complains and pleads against going to school and creeps like a snail on his way there, each morning, with his bag of books and his well-scrubbed face. Time passes and he becomes a youth, and falls in love, and spends his time sighing loudly for the love of his lady, and writing grand poems about her slightest features. From love his interest changes into war, as he grows to manhood, and he goes to battle to gain fame as a soldier. He wears a bushy beard that almost covers his face, and he uses bad words and curses from foreign languages. He is quarrelsome and ready to suspect that others are insulting him. In an instant his sword is out for a fight. He goes after fame which is uncertain and short-lived and risks his life to win it. In course of time he gets tired of this settles down in the lazy, comfortable life of a magistrate. He becomes fat and his middle grows out into a paunch which is well lined with the chickens he has eaten, and which he probably got as bribes. He puts on a strict look, in court, quotes stale proverbs and gives silly examples. From well-fed importance the middle-aged man declines into elder lines and retirement. He stays at home, and treasures the clothes of his younger days, now useless to them. He looks like a clown with his spectacles on his nose and a bag at his belt in which he carries what he needs. He goes about all the time in slippers, for he does not like to go out of the house. The world seems too large, and distances too great for his feeble legs. The loud bold voice his manhood becomes the girlish treble of childhood. His breath whistles while he speaks. In the last scene of life the old man becomes a child again and loses his memory. His senses weaken; slight, taste, hearing gradually die. He is, in fact, a walking corpse already, and death only puts a conclusion to his dying which begins much earlier.
There is a great deal of wisdom under the comedy of this speech. It is strange that man should grow gradually to full ripeness and after that grow backward, as it were, until he is a child again.