New syllabus

English Literature made easy - Poetry

Seven stages of man

by William Shakespeare:

William Shakespeare is one of the most celebrated names in English Literature. Being a Literary genius, Shakespeare lived in the age of Elizebethan Drama based on rather unusual themes. Shakespearian drama and poems won extreme popularity.

Introducing different concepts, his style, rhythm, rhyme, tone and wording enhanced the spontaneous flow of the poem keeping the theme alive. His major works are poetic drama, plays which explore universal themes, raising his voice to express his thoughts about the limited experiences of man during his lifetime.

'Seven stages of man' is an extract from his popular drama As you like it.' Shakespeare, from a philosophical point of view compares man's survival as an actor on a stage. Exits and entrances compared to birth and death and the vicissitudes experienced.

"Theatrical Terms' presenting each stage of life as a scene of the theatre, presenting man's behaviour pattern in each stage of life. Shakespeare derives certain characteristics prevalent in the life of a man at each stage.

As an infant 'Mewling and puking in the Nurse's - arms'

The school boy 'creeping like a snail unwilling to school.

The Lover sighing like a furnace." The soldier "seeking the "bubble reputation, even in the cannon's mouth" The justice "In fair round belly, with good caponlin'd

with eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws, and modern instances"
"The sixth stage shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon."
Then this great personality of man deteriorates.
"The lean and slippered pantaloon"
"spectacles on nose"
"and pouch on side" and a shrunk shank."
Shakespeare has clearly brought to light the seven
stages of man expressed in an elegant style'
The failure of the man to raise his manly voice
"Turning towards childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound."

As an actor, retires from stage when he fails to raise his voice, so does the man retires from society in a pathetic condition.

Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
In second childishness and mere oblivion
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sanstaste, sans everything.
The final stage is really pathetic berefit of sigh"
taste and all other requirements bestowed on man.

Shakespeare in a philosophical manner reveals to the world the universal truth of man's existence through the seven stages of a man's life.

In describing man's existence Shakespeare clearly brings to light the exact truth of man's duration of existence. His wording is extremely powerful 'buble' may mean the short duration of the 'reputation earned by a man'. The judge is gifted with dignity, wisdom and experience. As deterioration starts the 'perfect personality' of man fades away.

"Spectacles on nose, pouch on side," "shrunk shank."

In a significant manner Shakespeare has brought to light the whole procedure of a man's lifespan. The various phases in man's life, the developments reaching the peak and then the deterioration coming into existence.

Shakespeare, moving his actors in 'a logistic manner', covering the entire stages of the changes during a man's lifetime, 'the developments and deteriorations' physical and intellectual, Shakespeare's philosophical thinking, elegant wording, creativity, maintaining the rhythm and rhyme and highlighting the universal truth through the portrait of a "man's existence, a man's lifespan" blended in such manner so as to establish the fact that man's existence is but the part of an actor on the stage.

Mrs. C. Ekanayake,
Retd. specialist teacher Eng.