lancek4 wrote:"All the world is a stage and we, merely actors. "
I think often we forget what 'actors' implies. We are merely 'acting' the script and saying the lines we were given.
Two little quibbles, Lance. I did not mean the word "actor" in the sense you are using it. I meant it in it's most basic sense, as one that takes action, that does things. We are not, in my view, "acting the script." That would be contrary to my philosophy of free will, as I am most determinedly opposed to
Determinism.
Second, the passage you (mis)quote is one of my favourites, from As You Like It. I can cite it (along with a lot of other Shakespeare) from memory. This one is usually referred to as "the seven ages of man."
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 honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the canon'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.