What is the authors tone in all the worlds a stage by William Shakespeare?

Answer 1

The speech "All the world's a stage", sometimes called "The Seven Ages of Man" is a speech from the play As You Like It, by William Shakespeare. The speech is given by a character called Jaques, who is what they then called a "humorous man", because his personality is dominated by the emotional traits associated with bodily humors. In Jaques' case, it is melancholy, and his life is dominated by cynicism and depression.

In the play the Duke (Duke Senior), who is banished to the middle of the bush but manages to keep cheerful about it, has just encountered the likewise banished and starving Orlando, who has tried desperately to steal their food. The Duke says they will share with him without force, and Orlando departs to find his elderly follower Adam (some people think Shakespeare played Adam because his bald head made him look older than he was). The Duke turns to Jaques and says, in effect, "There are lots of folks on this stage we call the world, and some are obviously worse off than we are. So cheer up!" But instead Jaques picks up the "world's a stage" metaphor and spins it into this marvelous set speech. Because it is Jaques who is speaking, it is full of snarky remarks about the puking baby, the reluctant schoolboy, the ridiculous lover who writes poetry to his mistress's eyebrow, the soldier's strange oaths and so on. His tone is sarcastic. He is making fun of people like that. But as he gets to the sixth age, the "lean and slippered Pantaloon", his melancholic disposition starts to take over, and he reflects sadly on how time has affected the man's voice and shrunk shank. And with the seventh age, his depression takes over completely as he portrays the senile man, stripped of his senses and waiting for death.

Then Orlando and Adam arrive and the play continues. This was just an interlude, But Shakespeare has made the speech match exactly the tone that a man like Jaques would take. It is not the "author's tone" at all, but the character's tone.