All the World's a Stage by William Shakespeare (summary, analysis, questions answers)

Themes

In ‘All the world’s a stage’ Shakespeare discusses the futility of humanity’s place in the world. He explores themes of time, aging, memory, and the purpose of life. Through the poem’s central conceit, that everyone is simply a player in a larger game that they have no control over, he brings the themes together. Shakespeare takes the reader through the stages of life, starting with infancy and childhood and ending up with an old man who’s been a lover, a soldier, and a judge. The “man” dies after reverting back to a state that’s close to childhood and infancy.

Tone and Mood

In’ All the world’s a stage’ Shakespeare creates a somber and depressing mood through the simple breakdown of life, success, love, and death. The beauties of life are compiled into a short monologue that’s over almost as soon as it began. With this, the reader is left to consider their own life and what “stage” they’re in now. The speaker knows that this is the way the world is, everyone listening to his words is all going to end up back where they started as children and there’s no way to change that fact.

Literary Devices

Shakespeare makes use of several literary devices in ‘All the World’s A Stage.’ Some are:

Simile: ‘creeping like a snail’; ‘soldier… bearded like the pard’; etc.

Metaphor: the entire poem itself is more like symbolism; men and women are portrayed as players whereas life is portrayed as the stage.

Repetition: another figure of speech used in this poem; words like sans, age, etc. are repeated.

Question

Describe the various stages of a human’s life picturized in the poem “All the World’s a Stage.” 

The first stage according to the Bard is a crying infant who pukes in the nurse's arms. The second role played by a man is that of a whining schoolboy who hates going to school, but because he is forced to, he goes there unwillingly carrying a big burden on his back. In the third stage, man becomes a lover, “sighing like a furnace” and singing sad love songs thinking about his beloved all the while. In the fourth stage, he is a patriotic soldier, dedicating himself to protecting his country. In the fifth role he plays, man becomes a Judge and is bent on upholding truth and justice, having sound wisdom in the different things of life. In the sixth stage, he begins to get older. He becomes leaner, loses his strength, vitality, and his eyesight too, and is dependent on his spectacles. The seventh stage, which is the final stage, is pretty much like the first stage, which Shakespeare describes as “second childhood” where man becomes so fragile, loses his eyesight completely, is ‘toothless' and without taste and without everything, just like the childhood. But one major difference is, he is totally alone and isolated in his “second childhood” when compared to his first.