Which figure of speech is used in poem all the world's stage?

Answer 1

William Shakespeare was one of the great English poets and dramatists of the Sixteenth Century. All The World Is A Stage is a speech from his play As You Like It, which in the play is spoken by the melancholy philosopher Jacques. It was not written as a song, but it could be set to music. Whether life progresses in a straight line or in a circular path is still a question unanswered satisfactorily by philosophers. A point in a straight line will never be repeated and the feelings and passions attached to that particular moment can never be enjoyed anymore. But a circle is the only figure where each point flies straight forward along it's tangent and at the same ends where it starts. If life progresses in a circle, the feelings and passions attached to a particular age certainly can be gone through and experienced again after a time as illustrated in this song, the old age being an exact replica of the infancy. But it has to be agreed that Jacques' description of the various stages of man's life is rather cynical.

Man's history on earth seems to be pitiful and comic. He has seven distinct stages in his life in this world which appear as characters one after the other in a play. Infant, school boy, lover, soldier, magistrate, old man and the dying man parts are all played by us one after the other on the stage that is this world, unless untimely called back. Mankind has the longest infancy. Suppose a monkey and a man are born on the same day. When it is one year the monkey will be performing many wonderful feats on the trees, but the human child will still be lying there invalid and unable to do anything by itself. This long period of helpless infancy is a preparation for the future mighty acts to be performed by man. Shakespeare spells this philosophy strongly in the song. 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 grammer school. Yes, times have not changed. The most beautiful thing in this world to look at is still the morning face of a child going to school, and when he returns in the evening he still looks like coming from a battle field.

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 shall be forgiven as it also is a natural stage in the human evolvement. Then the stage of the lover strongly and silently evolves into that of the soldier when sentimentality withdraws and strength appears. In this stage which is unusually colourful and lively, he seeks chivalry and glory and is even ready to 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 that if someone stand outside this world and watch, 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 position 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, a 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 have become a playground to his thin legs. We may like 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 to reside in other realms of this vast universe, or born again in this world to repeat everything.

Answer 2

It's not a poem, actually, but a speech given by Jaques, a depressed guy hanging around in the woods with the exiled Duke. The Duke tries to cheer Jaques up by pointing out that some people are worse off than he is. Jaques replies by saying that we just end up being the people we are because we are like actors following a script.

In other words, because of where the speech comes in the play, and the character which has been established for the guy who says it, we know that the tone of the speech will be depressed, sad and despairing. Taken out of context, you might not think so, which is why you need to look at it in context.

Answer 3

It may be an example of found poetry, like when someone copies down a notice at a train station and calls that a poem. Shakespeare would not have called it a poem; it was never intended as such. It is a speech to be said during the play As You Like It. The character Jaques is responding to the Duke's comment that some people are worse off than they are. Jaques, who is of a depressed and cynical disposition, says (at some length, and with some humour) that everyone is pretty much the same, that they are all playing from the same script.

Evidently someone heard or read that speech and said, "Hey! that would make a great poem for the poetry anthology I'm putting together." But it's not really a poem at all.

Answer 4

Ok, guys, let's get this straight. "All the World's a Stage", sometimes known as "The Seven Ages of Man", is not a poem. It is a speech from a play by William Shakespeare called As You Like It, which is delivered by a character called Jaques to another character called Duke Senior.

It is, however, crammed to the gills with figures of speech. I bet you can't get five words into it without hitting one. "All the world's a stage . . ." Bingo! That's a metaphor. It will shortly become an extended metaphor. There are similes in there too, and metonymy, and alliteration.

Answer 5

Irony is such a slippery term that it is difficult to say. Perhaps the irony is that you and many others consider this to be a "famous poem of Shakespeare", when it is not a poem at all, but just a speech from one of his plays. Or perhaps the irony is that you take this speech very seriously when it was not intended to be taken seriously at all, except perhaps for the last stage.

Answer 6

William Shakespeare uses extended metaphors and similes in the poem, All the World's a Stage. The poem is entitled The Seven Stages of Man, from the play, As You Like It.

Answer 7

A metaphor--it is a comparison between two things without using the word "like", which would make it a simile.

Answer 8

world is a stage