This is an extract from a Shakespeare play, "As you like it", written nearly four hundred years ago. It is a famous speech, known as "The seven ages of man", by a character called Jaques.It is one of Shakespeare´s most famous monologues. He analyzes the great drama of life in a world which is "a wide and universal theatre". The basic idea is that every life is a theatrical performance. Man is just playing a role. Shakespeare divides the life of a man into seven ages or acts, and describes each with a character: infant, school-boy, lover, soldier, justice, pantaloon and second childhood.
Act II, Scene 7," AS YOU LIKE IT" by William Shakespeare.
All the world´s 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 pucking in the nurse´s arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with this satchel,
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woful 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 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. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper´d pantaloon
With spectacles on nose and puoch on side,
His youthful hose well sav´d a world too wide
For his shunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends his strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion
sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C68ksx6QYEo
Glossary
mewling and pucking: crying and being sick
whining: making a complaining noise
woful: sad
oaths: swear, rude words
belly: stomach
capon: male chicken fattened for eating
saws: proverbs or sayings
slipper´d: with slippers on
pantaloon: (archaic) in commedia dell´arte, a foolish old Venetian merchant
hose: kind of trousers
oblivion: forgetfulness
sans: without (French word)
