Monday, May 18, 2009

All The World's A Stage ~ by William Shakespeare

.
Elvis Presley paraphrased the intro of ‘All The World's A Stage ~ by William Shakespeare’ in his song ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight’. Here’s more info from Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_world
All the world's a stage is the phrase that begins a famous monologue from William Shakespeare's ‘As You Like It’, spoken by the melancholy Jaques. 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: infant, school-boy, lover, soldier, justice, pantaloon, and second childhood, "sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything". It is one of Shakespeare's most frequently-quoted passages.

All The World's A Stage
~ by William Shakespeare
‘As You Like It’, Jaques (Act II, Scene VII, lines 139-166)
(Blog Version ~ Note that everything within these '{parenthesis}' do not belong to the actual phrases by William Shakespeare.)

{00 ~ Intro:}
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.

{01 ~ The infant:}
At first the infant, mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.

{02 ~ The boy:}
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel and shining morning face, creeping like snail unwillingly to school.

{03 ~ The lover:}
And then the lover, sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad made to his mistress' eyebrow.

{04 ~ The soldier:}
Then a soldier, full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, seeking the bubble reputation even in the cannon's mouth.

{05 ~ The adult (the justice):}
And then the justice, in fair round belly with good capon lin'd, with eyes severe and beard of formal cut, full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part.

{06 ~ The elderly:}
The sixth age shifts into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon, with spectacles on nose and pouch on side; his youthful hose, well sav'd, a world too wide for his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, turning again toward childish treble, pipes and whistles in his sound.

{07 ~ The 2ND childhood:}
Last scene of all that ends this strange eventful history, is second childishness and mere oblivion; sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."

No comments:

Post a Comment