Topics to be Learn : Introduction Paraphrase Glossary The Seven Ages of Man Literary Devices Used Grammar

Warming Up:

Question 1. Pair work

(i) Talk to your friend about all the things related to ‘Seven.’  For example : Seven wonders of the world.

(ii) Pair up with your partner and name those given below all of the under :

(a) The seven wonders of the world : ________________________

(b) The seven continents : ________________________

(c) The seven colours of the rainbow : ________________________

(d) The seven notes of the music : ________________________

(e) The seven seas of the world : ________________________

Question 2. Life is often compared to many things. Write down 7 things that life can be compared to and justify the comparison. For example,

(a) Life is a keyboard, because if you press the right keys you have typed a good destiny.

(b) _______________________________

(c) _______________________________

(d) _______________________________

(e) _______________________________

(f) _______________________________

(g) _______________________________

Question 3. Match the approximate ages with the stages.

No.	Age-group		Stages
1	Birth to 2 years	a	teenage/adolescence
2	3 years to 12 years	b	old age/second childhood
3	13 years to 17 years	c	middle-age
4	18 years to about 44 years	d	babyhood/infancy
5	About 45 years to 60 years	e	senior citizen/elderly person
6	65 years up to 75 to 80 years	f	adulthood
7	Above 80 years	g	childhood

Introduction :

About the Poet :

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) was an English poet, playwright, and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist.

• Often called England's national poet and the “Bard of Avon” (he was born in Stratford-upon-Avon).
• Wrote 39 plays, 154 sonnets, and several long narrative poems.
• Famous plays include Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, and As You Like It.
• This poem is an extract from his comedy play As You Like It, spoken as a monologue by the character Jaques.

Background and Context :

The poem ‘All the World's a Stage’ is one of the most quoted passages in English literature. It is taken from Act II, Scene VII of Shakespeare's play As You Like It, where the melancholic character Jaques delivers this speech.

In this extract, Shakespeare compares the entire world to a stage and every human being to an actor who plays different roles (or 'parts') as they pass through different stages of life. Just as actors enter and exit a stage, human beings are 'born' (enter) and 'die' (exit) — and in between, they perform a sequence of seven roles corresponding to seven ages of life.

Key Extended Metaphor World = a stage Men and women = actors/players Birth = entrance (an actor entering the stage) Death = exit (an actor leaving the stage) Life = a play performed in seven acts (the seven ages of man)

Paraphrase :

The poem "All the World's a Stage" is a famous speech written by William Shakespeare in his play As You Like It. Shakespeare compares the world to a stage and people to actors who play different roles during their lives.

The central theme of the poem is that human life passes through different stages and that change is a natural part of life. Shakespeare describes seven stages of life. These begin with a helpless baby and end with old age, when a person becomes weak and dependent again. The stages include the infant, schoolboy, lover, soldier, justice (a wise and respected adult), old man, and finally a second childhood before death. This shows that life is temporary and everyone must go through these stages.

The poem is written in blank verse, which means it has a regular rhythm but does not rhyme. Shakespeare uses many literary devices to make the poem interesting:

• Metaphors: The world is compared to a stage, and life is compared to a play.
• Similes: The schoolboy is described as moving "like a snail," and the lover sighs "like a furnace."
• Onomatopoeia: Words such as "mewling," "puking," and "whistles" imitate sounds.

The poem is admired because it presents a realistic picture of human life. It clearly shows how people change physically and emotionally as they grow older. In the end, Shakespeare reminds us that no matter how successful or famous we become, everyone eventually grows old and returns to a helpless state before death.

Message of the poem: Life is like a play in which every person has different roles to perform. Change is unavoidable, and all human beings pass through the same stages of life.

Glossary (Difficult Words) :

Word/Phrase	Meaning
Players	Actors
Exits and entrances	Leaving and coming onto a stage (i.e., death and birth)
Mewling	Crying weakly, like a baby
Puking	Throwing up, vomiting
Satchel	School bag
Woeful ballad	A sad poem or song
Pard	Poetical short form of 'leopard'
Cannon's mouth	Facing great danger to life (on the battlefield)
With good capon lined	With excess fat from careless eating habits (a capon is a fattened chicken)
Saws	Sayings, proverbs
Pantaloon	A foolish old man (a stock comic character)
Youthful hose	Close-fitting covering for the legs, worn in youth
Shank	The leg, from knee to ankle
Treble	A high-pitched, thin voice (here: three times weaker than before)
Second childishness	A return to the helpless, ignorant state of a child
Oblivion	The state of being unaware or unconscious of surroundings and happenings
Sans	Without (a French word used by Shakespeare for effect)

 The Seven Ages of Man :

Shakespeare divides a man's life into seven stages, comparing each to a role played by an actor. The table below summarises each stage:

Age	Role/Stage	Qualities	Actions/Description
1	Infant (Babyhood)	Helpless and weak	Cries and vomits in the nurse's arms; totally dependent.
2	Schoolboy (Childhood)	Reluctant and unhappy	Whines, carries his satchel, has a shining/fresh face, but crawls unwillingly to school like a snail.
3	The Lover (Adolescence/Youth)	Romantic and emotional	Sighs like a furnace (burning with passion) and composes sad love songs/poems for his beloved.
4	Soldier (Adulthood)	Aggressive and honour-bound	Swears strange oaths, grows a beard like a leopard, is quick-tempered, and risks his life for fleeting fame ('the bubble reputation') even facing cannon fire.
5	Justice/Judge (Middle age)	Wise but pompous	Has a round belly from good living, looks stern, has a neatly trimmed beard, and is full of wise sayings and sound judgments.
6	Pantaloon (Old age)	Shrunken and comic	Becomes lean, wears slippers and spectacles, his clothes (hose) now look too big for his shrunken legs; his once-deep voice turns thin and childish again.
7	Second Childhood (Extreme old age)	Helpless, near death	Returns to a state like infancy — without teeth, eyesight, taste, or any other faculty ('sans everything'); the play of life ends.

Literary Devices Used

(i) Extended Metaphor : The entire poem is built on one extended metaphor: the world is compared to a stage, people to actors, and life's stages to acts in a play.

• World = a stage
• Men and women = players (actors)
• Birth and death = entrances and exits
• The seven ages = seven roles played by one actor

(ii) Simile :

• “creeping like snail” — the schoolboy's slow, reluctant walk to school is compared to a snail's crawl.
• “Sighing like furnace” — the lover's deep sighs are compared to the heat and smoke from a furnace.
• “bearded like the pard” — the soldier's beard is compared to a leopard's markings/fierceness.

(iii) Onomatopoeia : Words that imitate the sound they describe:

• “Mewling” — imitates the weak crying sound of an infant.
• “Whining” — imitates the complaining, nasal sound made by the schoolboy.
• “Pipes / whistles” — imitate the thin, high-pitched sound of an old man's voice.

(iv) Alliteration : Repetition of the same consonant sound at the start of nearby words:

• “Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything” — repetition of the 's' sound.
• “Sighing” / “satchel” / “shining” — repeated 's' and 'sh' sounds across the schoolboy/lover lines.
• “Jealous” and “quick in quarrel” — repeated 'qu' sound.

(v) Metaphor :

• “the bubble reputation” — reputation/fame is compared to a bubble: attractive but fragile and short-lived.
• “the world too wide” (for his shrunken legs) — the old man's own former clothes become a metaphor for how the body shrinks with age.

(vi) Inversion (Anastrophe) : Shakespeare changes the normal word order of a sentence for poetic emphasis or to fit the rhythm:

• “His acts being seven ages” (instead of the more natural 'his acts are seven ages').
• “Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard” (descriptive phrase placed before the subject's actions, instead of a standard subject-verb order).

(vii) Transferred Epithet : An adjective that logically describes one noun is applied to another, related noun:

• “woeful ballad” — 'woeful' (sorrowful) truly describes the lover who is sad, but the adjective is transferred onto the 'ballad' (song) he composes.
• “shining morning face” — 'shining' literally describes youth/freshness, transferred onto the schoolboy's face.

(viii) Blank Verse : The poem has no rhyme scheme, but it does have a steady rhythm — each line generally contains five stressed beats (iambic pentameter). Poetry with a regular rhythm/meter but no rhyme is called Blank Verse. (This differs from Free Verse, like Tagore's 'Where the Mind is Without Fear', which has neither rhyme nor a fixed rhythm.)

Grammar :

Literary Device	Meaning
Extended Metaphor	A metaphor continued throughout a passage or poem
Simile	Comparison using "like" or "as"
Onomatopoeia	Words that imitate sounds
Alliteration	Repetition of beginning consonant sounds
Metaphor	Direct comparison without "like" or "as"
Blank Verse	Poetry with regular rhythm but no rhyme