All the world's a stage: Difference between revisions
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imported>Aleta Curry (not sure this should be a stand-alone, but a subpage of (an)other cluster(s). Ideas, anyone?) |
imported>Peter Schmitt (adding the play's title) |
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'''All the world's a stage''' is the opening line of one of [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare's]] best known and most quoted [[monologue]]s. Even people who do not know the source of the quotation may use it readily in conversation. | '''All the world's a stage''' is the opening line of one of [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare's]] best known and most quoted [[monologue]]s in his play ''[[As you like it]]''. Even people who do not know the source of the quotation may use it readily in conversation. | ||
The passage is generally used to suggest a certainly falseness or fake quality about human behaviour. In Elizabethan times, however, it was a widely-recognised [[metaphor]] that the stages of human life are like the acts of a play. | The passage is generally used to suggest a certainly falseness or fake quality about human behaviour. In Elizabethan times, however, it was a widely-recognised [[metaphor]] that the stages of human life are like the acts of a play. | ||
Revision as of 18:59, 3 February 2010
All the world's a stage is the opening line of one of Shakespeare's best known and most quoted monologues in his play As you like it. Even people who do not know the source of the quotation may use it readily in conversation.
The passage is generally used to suggest a certainly falseness or fake quality about human behaviour. In Elizabethan times, however, it was a widely-recognised metaphor that the stages of human life are like the acts of a play.
The opening lines of the quotation are:
"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."