About “The Seven Ages of Man”

In As You Like It, the sad Jacques delivers these lines as a monologue in Act II, Scene VII.

In this monologue, Jacques begins an extended metaphor where life is compared to a play and humans
the various actors within that play.

In the speech, man essentially plays seven parts in his lifetime:

The helpless infant

The whining schoolboy

The emotional lover

The devoted soldier

The wise judge

The clueless old man

The corpse

And don’t be alarmed by the obvious sexism in the poem (there isn’t a single example that is from the
female perspective). Shakespeare wrote it in the 16th century, and it is the voice of the character
Jacques. Most give him a pass.