Is the World a Stage?

Mr Pearce rephrases Shakespeare's statement as a question: Is all the world a stage, and all the men and women merely players? As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII

FromThe Imaginative Conservative

By Joseph Pearce

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.

                                    As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII

Is the world a stage? And are all of us merely players acting out a part or, as Jacques suggests in As You Like It, many parts? And if we are playing a part on the world’s stage, is there any point or purpose to the part we’re playing? If life’s a play and we’re all playing, is there any meaning behind all the play acting? Does life have meaning and purpose or should we agree with the cynical judgment of the psychopathic serial killer, Macbeth:

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

It does appear that the melancholy Jacques is tempted to agree with the murderous Macbeth, suggesting in the rest of his famous monologue that life is meaningless, that it is merely much ado about nothing. He summarizes each of the seven acts that constitute the ages of man, from his infancy till his ultimate decrepitude and death:

Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

According to Jacques, we take our final bow without everything, i.e. with nothing, leaving the stage at play’s end destined for “mere oblivion”.

Although it is easy to distance Shakespeare from the words of the psychotic and suicidal Macbeth, whose dark philosophy matches his dark deeds, it is more difficult to separate him from the seriously thoughtful Jacques.

In order to understand Shakespeare’s view, we need see his own plays as mirrors that show us ourselves. As Hamlet says, “the play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king”. As with the staging of “The Mouse Trap” in Hamlet, each of Shakespeare’s plays is a play-within-the-play with which Shakespeare hopes to catch the conscience of his audience. The players on his stage reflect the players on the world’s stage, enabling us to see and understand our own parts more clearly. In this, he is merely following the example of Christ, who sanctifies storytelling with his parables, catching the conscience of every generation with plays-within-the-play, such as the story of the Prodigal Son.

As for the Prodigal Son himself, he is not so much a type as an archetype. This is evident from the way that each of us relates to him. We do not say that the Prodigal Son is like us; we say that we are like the Prodigal Son. He is the archetype or the prototype and we are merely types. In this sense, in some sense, and in a real sense, he is more real than we are. Christ presents us with a fictional narrative, a story, a play-within-the-play, which shows us ourselves in a way that makes sense of ourselves. What is shown to us is not merely a mirror but a magic mirror, or a mystical mirror, or a miraculous mirror, or a moral mirror, which doesn’t merely show us who we are but who we should be and who we shouldn’t be.

As for Christ Himself, He is the Playwright who steps onto the world’s stage to show us the purpose of the play itself. He shows us that our part in the play is to follow His example. We are to love as He loves and suffer as He suffers. If we do as He directs, we will be playing our part in the divine comedy which culminates in the happy ending. If we refuse to do as He directs, we will be choosing the tragic path which leaves us “sans everything”.

So it is that Hamlet lays down his life for his friends, purging his country of the “something rotten” which had cursed it. He has died, as Christ had died, transforming tragedy into a divine comedy, and we are happy to join Horatio in his prayer over the prince’s body that flights of angels might sing him to his rest. By contrast, Macbeth lays down the lives of his friends on the altar erected to his own murderous ambition, becoming the “something rotten” which curses his country. He has refused to be directed by his conscience, preferring his own prideful path of sound and fury, signifying nothing and leaving him “sans everything”.

But what about Jacques? What about the melancholy philosopher who seems tempted towards the nihilism that would destroy Macbeth? Does he follow the same destructive path?

Not in the least. In the final scene of As You Like It, he learns of the dramatic conversion of the wicked Duke Frederick:

Duke Frederick, hearing how that very day

Men of great worth resorted to this forest,

Address’d a mighty power; which were on foot,

In his own conduct, purposely to take

His brother here and put him to the sword:

And to the skirts of this wild wood he came;

Where meeting with an old religious man,

After some question with him, was converted

Both from his enterprise and from the world,

His crown bequeathing to his banish’d brother,

And all their lands restored to them again

That were with him exiled.

The miraculous conversion of the wicked Duke, who had previously been as murderous and malevolent as Macbeth, has a profound affect on the deeply philosophical Jacques:

Sir, by your patience. If I heard you rightly,

The duke hath put on a religious life

And thrown into neglect the pompous court?

On being told that this was indeed the case, Jacques decides to retire as a courtier and to join the newly converted Duke in the hermit’s cave in which he was now living, presumably in order to court conversion himself:

To him will I : out of these convertites

There is much matter to be heard and learn’d.

Jacques’s final part in the play is playing the part of the Prodigal Son. He still believes that the world’s a stage and the he is merely a player but he no longer believes that the last scene of all is mere oblivion. He has stepped from a potential tragedy into a gloriously divine comedy.

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The featured image is “Poster of Thos. W. Keene in William Shakespeare’s MacBeth, c. 1884,” and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.