All the World's a Stage

It seems to me that I have spent most of my life being a spectator. I watch ball games. I watch people. I watch the news. I have always admired people who do. Why do athletes, and actors, and rock stars receive so much admiration (and money) in our culture. Because they are doers. The are the ones playing, acting, singing, producing. I have heard of Shakespeare's passage from "As You Like it." I had never read the whole. When I did this morning I began to realize that I had been a living as a prop on this stage. I have decided to start playing my part. The play will be much more lively and colorful with me in it. Possibly a Tony Award winner! Take time to read this soliloquy:

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.
And then the whining school-boy, 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 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 slipper'd 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.

Shakespeare, from As You Like it.