All the world's a stage

"All the world's a stage" is the phrase that begins a monologue from William Shakespeare's As You Like It, spoken by the melancholy Jaques in Act II Scene VII. 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, schoolboy, lover, soldier, justice, Pantalone and old age, facing imminent death. It is one of Shakespeare's most frequently quoted passages.

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.
Then, the whining school-boy with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. 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. And then, the justice,
In fair round belly, with a good capon lined,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws, and 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,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Ages of Man (play)

Ages of Man is a one-man show performed by John Gielgud featuring a collection of speeches in Shakespeare's plays. Based on an anthology edited by Oxford professor George Rylands in 1939 that organized the speeches to show the journey of life from birth to death, the show takes its title from Jaques' "Ages of Man" speech from As You Like It ("All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players..."). Like the book, the show was divided into three parts: Youth, Manhood and Old Age.

Gielgud was inspired to do a Shakespeare recital by his great-aunt, actress Ellen Terry, who performed her own recital titled Shakespeare's Heroines. Gielgud first attempted such a recital during World War II, when he would perform a collection of speeches he called Shakespeare in Peace and War, culminating in the "Once More Unto the Breach" speech from Henry V.

Gielgud gave the first experimental performance of Ages of Man in a house in St. James Square in London. It premiered at the Freemason's Hall at the 1957 Edinburgh Festival to a sold-out house and an overwhelming success. Gielgud would go on to perform the recital for the next ten years all over the world, winning a special Tony Award for the 1959 Broadway engagement (where it was revived in 1963), an Emmy Award for producer David Susskind for Outstanding Dramatic Program - Single Program for its 1966 telecast on CBS, and a 1979 Grammy Award for Gielgud's third audio recording of the recital, having been nominated for the same award for the versions made in 1959 and 1964. The 1966 television version was released on DVD in 2010, and the album made from the play is available as an mp3.