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As You Like It · William Shakespeare · c. 1599
JAQUES
A professional melancholic who has found an audience and intends to keep it.
The speech135 words · 4 beats
0:00 / 1:16
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.
At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.
And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful 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.
Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.turn
- Speaking to
- A dinner party in a forest.
- What just happened
- A starving old servant has just been carried in and fed. Someone has said that the world is full of misery. Jaques takes this as a cue.
- Objective
- To hold the floor — and, underneath that, to say something true enough to be forgiven for holding it.
- The turn
- 'Last scene of all' — the performance stops being funny to him.
- Watch out for
- Extremely well known. Only bring it in if you have a reading that isn't the recital everyone has heard.