As You Like It: Act II, Scene vii First Folio

As You Like It       Act II, Scene vii       Jacques
(First Folio edition)

This text is featured in our interview with Nicholas Martin-Smith.

Click here to open up a modern version in a new window.

Click here to open up a scanned version.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxAll the world’s a stage,
1119:  And all the men and women, meerely Players;
1120:  They haue their Exits and their Entrances,
1121:  And one man in his time playes many parts,
1122:  His Acts being seuen ages. At first the Infant,
1123:  Mewling, and puking in the Nurses armes:
1124:  Then, the whining Schoole-boy with his Satchell
1125:  And shining morning face, creeping like snaile
1126:  Vnwillingly to schoole. And then the Louer,
1127:  Sighing like Furnace, with a wofull ballad
1128:  Made to his Mistresse eye-brow. Then, a Soldier,
1129:  Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the Pard,
1130:  Ielous in honor, sodaine, and quicke in quarrell,
1131:   Seeking the bubble Reputation
1132:  Euen in the Canons mouth: And then, the Iustice
1133:  In faire round belly, with good Capon lin’d,
1134:  With eyes seuere, and beard of formall cut,
1135:  Full of wise sawes, and moderne instances,
1136:  And so he playes his part. The sixt age shifts
1137:  Into the leane and slipper’d Pantaloone,
1138:  With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side,
1139:  His youthfull hose well sau’d, a world too wide,
1140:  For his shrunke shanke, and his bigge manly voice,
1141:  Turning againe toward childish trebble pipes,
1142:  And whistles in his sound. Last Scene of all,
1143:  That ends this strange euentfull historie,
1144:  Is second childishnesse, and meere obliuion,
1145:  Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans euery thing.
1146:  [ Enter Orlando with Adam.]