How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare (31 page)

Forbear, and eat no more!…

He dies that touches any of this fruit

Till I and my affairs are answerèd
.

Question
: Ask your children what they think Duke Senior’s response will be to this desperate man who rushes into his camp brandishing a sword and demanding food.

Answer:
To Orlando’s surprise, Duke Senior responds with courtesy:
DUKE

Sit down and feed, and welcome to our table
.

Orlando answers, amazed:

Speak you so gently? Pardon me, I pray you
.

I thought that all things had been savage here…

If ever you have looked on better days
,

If ever been where bells have knolled
[tolled]
to church
,

If ever sat at any good man’s feast
,

If ever from your eyelids wiped a tear

And know what ’tis to pity and be pitied
,

Let gentleness my strong enforcement be
,

[Let me use gentleness as though it were force,]

In the which hope I blush and hide my sword
.

Could Orlando possibly have answered with a more beautiful speech? Repeat it aloud with your children—right now—and remind them that here is a man who has been humbled by kindness.

Orlando now explains that he and old Adam are starving, and that Adam is waiting alone not far away. This prompts the kindly Duke to promise that no one will eat anything until Orlando returns with Adam. Orlando rushes off, and it is at this point that the Duke says to his followers the words that we’re about to memorize:

Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy
.

This wide and universal theatre

Presents more woeful pageants than the scene

Wherein we play in
.

Make sure that your children learn this touching introduction to the more famous passage that follows.

Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy
.

“You see that there are others who suffer as we do.”

This wide and universal theatre

Presents more woeful pageants than the scene

Wherein we play in
.

“The world is like a big theater, and in it there are scenes even more woeful than ours.”

This wide and universal theatre

Presents more woeful pageants

than the scene

Wherein we play in
.

Theater as Metaphor

Your children should be aware, particularly as we tackle the Ages of Man Speech in the next chapter, that throughout his writing career, Shakespeare used the theater as one of his central metaphors for the life of mankind. We saw it in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
as the Mechanicals put on a play to solemnize the Duke’s wedding; we saw it in
Macbeth
(
a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage
); and we saw it in
Henry IV, Part 1
, where Falstaff and Hal put on their play in the tavern. Similarly, we’ll see it in several of the passages to come: in the great Prologue to
Henry V
(
O, for a muse of fire
); in Hamlet’s speech to the players (
Speak the speech, I pray you
); and, finally, in the moving summation of Shakespeare’s art in
The Tempest
(
Our revels now are ended
).

That Shakespeare should refer to the theater so often in his plays makes all the sense in the world. Shakespeare was a playwright, an actor, and a theater shareholder. His whole professional life revolved around the theater—and we’re about to encounter the greatest example of theater-as-metaphor in all of English literature.

Passage 18, Continued The World as a Stage

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 schoolboy 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 honor, 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 lined
,

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 slippered pantaloon

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side
,

His youthful hose, well saved, 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 everything
.

(As
You Like It
, Act II, Scene 7, lines 146–73)

The First Half

In this famous passage, Jaques describes the life cycle of every man and woman who has ever lived to old age. He begins by observing, simply:

All the world’s a stage
,

And all the men and women merely players
[actors].

Its simple rhythm mirrors the simplicity of the statement. Notice that it is in perfectly regular iambic pentameter.

All
the
world’s
a
stage
,

And
all
the
men
and
wom
en
mere
ly
play
ers
.

And yet perhaps this opening statement is not quite as simple as it seems. The existence of a play implies the existence of a playwright—a prime mover in the background—and that therefore we are all following a script. Shakespeare underlines this idea by reminding us that the actors in this play

have their exits and their entrances
.

We all arrive on this scene called life, and we will all, ultimately, leave it with a final exit.

Notice also how the opening of this speech starts in the middle of a line:
DUKE SENIOR

This wide and universal theatre

Presents more woeful pageants than the scene

Wherein we play in
.

JAQUES

All the world’s a stage…

This gives the opening a sense of surprise and immediacy. It means that we have to say it as though we’re jumping onto a passing train. I think that Shakespeare did it so that his speech about life would sound less bombastic. He wanted the now-famous passage to sneak up on us and sound conversational.

Practice the opening of the passage in this way with your children. You play Duke Senior and have your son or daughter play Jaques. Make sure that they start the speech
All the world’s a stage
as an extension of your line,
Wherein we play in
.

1. The Infant

At first the infant
,

Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms
.

Mewling
means “making baby noises.” Also point out to your children that this “age,” like all but one of the ages in the speech, begins in the middle of a line. Again, I think Shakespeare does this to make the speech move along dynamically and not pompously. Notice also how Jaques gives every age a slightly sardonic twist because that’s how he views the world. Here the baby is not only making baby noises, he’s also puking.

2. The Schoolboy

Then the whining schoolboy with his satchel
[backpack or rucksack]

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school
.

What a perfect picture of this poor boy dragging to school every day. I’m especially fond of the phrase
shining
morning
face
. Not only does it tell us that the boy’s face has been scrubbed clean for school, but it also implies that by evening it won’t be so shining: It will be dirty from the mayhem of a long school day. To pack so much information into such little space is a mark of Shakespeare’s poetic genius. Also notice the internal rhyme
whining
and
shining
, which makes the sentence easier to memorize.