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The man in the speech goes through these stages:

  • Infancy: In this stage he is dependent on others and needs to be constantly attended to.
  • Childhood: It is in this stage that he begins to go to school. He is reluctant to leave the protected environment of his home as he is still not confident enough to exercise his own discretion.
  • The lover: As an adolescent, he is awakened to feelings of love. He tries to express feelings through song or some other cultural activity.
  • The soldier: As a young adult, he embarks on a career. He is very easily aroused and is hot headed. He is always working towards making a reputation for himself and gaining recognition, however shortlived it may be, even at the cost of his own life.
  • The justice: In this stage, he is a mature adult and has acquired wisdom through the many experiences he has had in life. He has reached a stage where he has gained prosperity and social status. He becomes very attentive to his looks and begins to enjoy the finer things of life.
  • Old age: He begins to lose his charm --- both physical and mental. He begins to become the brunt of others' jokes. He loses his firmness and assertiveness, and shrinks in stature and personality.
  • Mental dementia and death: He loses his status and he becomes a non-entity. He becomes dependent on others like a child and is in need of constant support before finally dying.
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12y ago
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11y ago

The poem commences with life being compared to a huge stage where all of us are only actors. Each person has an entry into the world at birth and exits it at death.

According to Shakespeare, every man plays several parts during his life time. On the stage of life every man has seven acts. The first act of man is infancy. At this time all that the baby does is cry and puke on his nurse's lap. After he goes through his infant life, he emerges as a school child who slings his bag over his shoulder and creeps most unwillingly to school.

At the next stage in life, the young man is a lover who is busy composing ballads for his beloved and sighing deeply for her attention. He graduates into a bearded soldier who promises solemnly to guard his country. He is filled with national pride, is quick to be insulted and is always ready to spring up in defence. At this point of time he is more concerned with status and reputation. From the agile soldier, he goes on to become a judge whose waistline grows as he becomes fatter and fatter. He wears a short, formal beard and his eyes become intense. He is full of wisdom, speaking to everyone in a just and wise manner.

After he has played this part, he goes into the sixth age. He becomes thin, wears spectacles, the skin around him hangs loosely. He is made fun of as being a funny old man. His youth has been left behind. His clothes hang loosely around him and his once manly voice turns into a high pitched, childish one. With this, man enters the last act where he experiences his second childhood as he becomes dependent on people once more. He is overcome by senility and forgetfulness, as he loses his faculties of sight, hearing, smell and taste, slowly but surely, and ultimately dies.

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12y ago

Man's history on earth seems to be pitiful and comic. He has seven distinct stages in his life in this world which appears as characters one after the other in a play. Infant, school boy, lover, soldier, magistrate, old man and the dying man-all these parts are played by us one after another on the stage that is this world, unless untimely called back to the place where we came from. A newborn baby kicks and cries in his nurses' arms. The whining school boy with his heavy set of books and a shining morning face creeps like an unwilling snail to his grammar school.

The third stage is that of the lover who has loved and lost who sighs like a hot furnace and sings sad songs about his lost love. Such sentimentality and unripeness shall be forgiven, as it also is a natural stage in the normal evolvement of the human psyche and physique. Then the stage of the lover strongly and silently evolves into that of the soldier, when sentimentality withdraws and strength appears in its place. In this stage, which is unusually colourful and lively, he seeks chivalry and glory and is even ready to get into and explode himself inside the cannon's mouth to gain a bubble reputation, though momentary.

Now come the rest three successive stages of the middle aged man, the old man and the dying man, which also we act such extremely well on the stage that if someone stands outside this world and watches us, he would be amazed at how naturally we act. The fifth is a transition period in which man is equipped with the energy of the young and the experience of the old. How fortunate and prime a time and state to form oneself a statesman! In this middle age he is exceptionally able to distinguish between the right and the wrong and behaves like a magistrate, the man of justice.

Then he becomes old, his body becomes weak, and he begins to wear light slippers in place of heavy boots. He wears spectacles and his cheeks are baggy. His trousers are now loose, and they become a vast playground to his thin legs. We may like the old men if at least their sounds are sweet and their words are meaningful, but alas, he has now lost several of his teeth and his words have lost their sweetness and meaning. In the seventh and the last stage, which ends this strange history of man's life on the world's stage, he looses all his teeth, loses sight and taste and everything else and becomes again a child to close the circle. And perhaps after death he may go beyond this world and reside in other realms of this limitless universe, or born again in this world itself to repeat everything.

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6y ago

It is a speech spoken by the character Jaques in Shakespeare's play As You Like It, Act II Scene 7. It really doesn't have much to do with the action, but nicely fills in the space while the character Orlando is off finding his aged servant Adam.

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8y ago

Well, the Seven Ages of Man is a speech, not a sermon or a school lesson. You cannot learn from it. But you can think about what it says, which might give you some ideas. For example, although the speech starts out saying "all the men and women merely players", in fact the person being depicted is indisputably male: a schoolboy, a lover with a mistress, etc. So right from the get-go it is clear that there are significant problems with Jaques's attempt to suggest that all people's lives are exactly the same. Apart from the fact that women are discluded from his picture, some people do not fall in love, join the military, or live long enough to go senile, and very few are appointed as judges. We know that the specific facts about this imaginary man are far from universal, but Jaques is using them to make his images more vibrant and amusing. There is a sense in which we can see a larger concept in these very specific images: the soldier is someone who is taking risks to establish himself and gain a reputation, whereas the justice is someone who has already established himself and has gained a reputation. These two characters epitomise a career: first a period of intense hard work and risk taking, which leads to success and comfortable capon-eating rest. In this way the characters, although they are not universal, can be seen as representing stages which many people experience in life.In the dramatic context, Jaques is offering this speech as a response to the Duke's remark that there are people who are worse off than we are. As an argument it fails, because whether or not the stages of life are common, they are not universal. The Duke is right. There are people worse off.Also in the dramatic context, the speech serves a dramatic purpose, by allowing some real time delay between Orlando's departure to get Adam and his reappearance carrying his aged retainer. In terms of its function in the play, this speech is filler. But it is brilliant and amusing filler. Shakespeare was a genius at writing filler.

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6y ago

The "Seven Ages of Man" is a speech said by the character Jaques in Act II Scene 7 of William Shakespeare's play As You Like It. It serves the dramatic purpose of filling the space between the exit of Orlando to find his retainer Adam, and his re-entrance with Adam. In the meantime, commenting on Orlando and Adam's situation, Duke Senior tries to get Jaques to be less pessimistic and cynical by saying " We are not all alone unhappy. This wide and universal theatre presents more woeful pageants than the scene wherein we play in." Jaques replies by saying:

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 school-boy, 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. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well sav'd, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing.

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11y ago

Well, most people think it's a pretty good speech.

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12y ago

the themes of the poem the seven ages of man are life, the cycle of life

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11y ago
  1. Infant
  2. Schoolboy
  3. Love-struck teen
  4. Soldier/fighter
  5. Justice/wiseman
  6. elderly man
  7. Second childness/helpless elderly man
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