All the world’s a stage, and all the men and…

The speech comes in Act II, scene 7 of As You Like It, in the Forest of Arden, where the banished Duke Senior lives with his loyal lords. Orlando has just burst in, sword drawn, demanding food; kindly welcomed, he goes to fetch Adam, the old servant who fled with him and is weak with “age and hunger”. The Duke remarks that “this wide and universal theatre” shows sadder pageants than their own, and the melancholy Jaques takes up the image.

He divides a man’s life into seven acts: the mewling infant, the whining schoolboy, the sighing lover, the soldier “seeking the bubble reputation”, the justice, the old man in slippers, and finally “second childishness”, without teeth, eyes or taste. As soon as he finishes, Orlando returns carrying Adam, an old man whose loyalty seems to answer that bleak picture.

Shakespeare wrote the comedy around 1599, the year his company opened the Globe theatre. Comparing life to a play was already an ancient idea, but Jaques gave it the form everyone remembers.

As You Like It, Act II, scene 7 (Jaques), 1599

Checked word for word in the work itself.

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