Perspectives on Shakespeare’s “All The World’s a Stage”

- William Shakespeare

In this essay, I will attempt to offer my perspectives on Shakespeare’s “All The World’s a Stage” excerpt from “As You Like It”. 

When I first read through the verse, I am struck by the association of sounds with each stage of life, which has already been discussed in numerous online analyses. However, what strikes me most is not the lineup of sounds that almost forms a tune. Rather, it is the reflection of the relationship humans have with sounds. Through each stage of life, there is a specific sound that human “grows up” with. Babies “mewl”, school-boys “whine”, lovers “sigh”, soldiers take “oaths”, justice arbitrates with “wise saws”, old men in pantaloon with their “manly voice”, until silence bides us all a final goodbye. Our relationship with sounds is not limited to the natural sounds that we produce. We spend almost all our waking time immersing in an artificial soundscape, from the chime of machinery to the hymn of traffic. We even inject sounds into still visuals. Imagine someone shows us a picture of a concert hall with musicians playing and a photo of that very same concert hall without any musicians. Certainly, we will have a strangely different experience of the two photos, assuming we have experienced a concert before. Even though the picture does not produce any sounds, it seems as if the picture carries sounds with it. Surrounded by sounds, we have grown accustomed to sounds that it soon becomes incomprehensible to imagine a world without sounds. I have watched the movie “A quiet place”, in which there is an imagined world where supernatural creatures feast on animals (humans included) and hunt them through sounds. Despite the portrayal of the characters by the actors and actresses, I find the perspective offered by the movie rather simplistic. Would it be that easy to give up on sounds? I am terrified, not by the chase of the supernatural creatures, but by imagining myself in a world where even a gust of wind across the trees is penalised. Horrifying as silence entails, I do wonder if we can do away with silence at all. The speech ended with a void of teeth, eyes, taste, and everything. Yet, I am curious. Does silence always bring death? We love sound, but do we not yearn for a moment of silence? During a study trip to Indonesia, being surrounded by a constant onslaught of sounds, I find myself wishing for a moment of silence, sitting by myself and being cut off from the cacophony of sounds and voices in the world.

At the beginning of the verse, Shakespeare remarks, “All the world’s a stage,/ And all the men and women merely players”. In this sentence, players can be understood as actors/actresses. The speech then proceeds to describe different roles that an individual may play during the course of their lifetime, a baby, a school-boy, a lover, a soldier, a justice, and an old man. When I read the verse, I cannot help but wonder if Shakespeare is insinuating anything about the role that social norms play in our lives. When an actor comes onto the stage, for whom does he act? Does he act for himself? Does he act for the audience? Or does he act for a grandiose concept of “the art” that philosophers have struggled to define? Similarly, as participants of society, what exactly is our relationship with society? Do we periodically alternate between being ourselves and conforming to societal expectations? Do we shut out societal norms from our minds? Having played so many parts, does an actor still know what his personality was and is? I read Fernando Pessoa’s “The Book of Disquiet”, and am surprised at the many personalities he embodied. It has been reported that Pessoa often wrote in heteronyms, each with their own personality and life story. And strangely enough, don’t we all adopt different personalities and life stories for the different roles we need to embrace? In philosophical discussions on “Identity”, it is often assumed that identity is unique to each individual, and this identity is everlasting. As we have contemplated the different personalities we may adopt, is it not time for us to reconsider our presumption of identity? What if identity changes over time? A critical reader may raise the danger of such a conclusion – if our identity changes, how can we be responsible for our actions in the past? But I am sceptical of the response. Owning up to our identity does not necessarily dictate that we will be responsible for our actions. And even if our identity does change, our identity is still associated with us and thus is still us. If there be an invisible string (referred to as a necessary connection by some philosophers) between identity and our bodies, there shouldn’t be a problem in demanding responsibility for past actions. Put all the philosophical questions aside, we are still faced with a dazzling puzzle: For whom do we act?

In his book “The Myth of Sisyphus”, Albert Camus comments that the life of an actor ends the moment he leaves the stage. Well, to be frank, I understand Camus’ statement quite non-literally. Perhaps the life of an actor is not ephemeral (that he will get forgotten after the play ends). In a comparative analysis I have written on Shakespeare’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream” and Zhuangzi “The Butterfly Dream”, I have attempted to show the persistent effects of dreams on our life, through examining the effects dreams have on different characters in the stories. At the end of “Midsummer Night’s Dream”, Puck greeted us with a monologue “If we shadows have offended,/ Think but this, and all is mended,/ That you have but slumber’d here/ While these visions did appear./ And this weak and idle theme,/ No more yielding but a dream,…”. Yet, as readers, and audience, do we not feel any emotions that have been stirred up by the play? People often remark that a piece of literature will only truly die when people stop discussing it. I beg to differ. A piece of literature will only truly die when no one reads it. Even if we stop discussing the piece of literature, the ideas and concepts that may manifest through the texts may get internalised and form a part of ourselves that we carry around. It is important to discuss works of art; yet, it is even more important to read, see, watch, listen to, and immerse ourselves in works of art. Whether we really internalise anything from the works of arts, I will leave it to the readers to sleep on it. And even if we remain practical, we may still have a nice date from the play and get ourselves a potential partner. It’s not useless after all, isn’t it? Perhaps, the legacy we leave to the world is what we bring to others. Just as what an actor offers to the play that is enjoyed by the audience, our good deeds and wrongdoings are lived out by the people who interact with the play we manage to put up?

May 2025, United Kingdom.