The Misreading of Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of Man: A Selection from Susan Neiman’s Why Grow Up? (2016)
“Take a look at most any discussion of coming of age and you’ll find a reference to something called ‘Shakespeare’s seven ages of man’; google it, as of this writing, and you will get 196 million entries. In fact, dividing the life cycle into seven ages began well before Shakespeare, but most people will recognize the very famous line with which the speech begins: ‘All the world’s a stage’. The line that follows is grim enough: all the men and women are merely players, suggesting that the script of our lives has been written and the parts are all fixed. Worse than that: every possible role we might play is both miserable and ridiculous. The baby’s part is to mewl and puke, the schoolboy whines on his way to school, the lover can but sigh, writing foolheaded verse, the soldier seeks the glory that will kill him, and so it goes through to the last pathetic sequence that leaves the player with nothing at all. Here is the speech in full:
‘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 woful ballad.
Made to his mistress’ eye-brow.
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 lin’d,
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 sav’d, 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)
A more formidable gloss on the modern slogan life sucks and then you die would be hard to find.
Now some of the texts that quote it try to soften Shakespeare’s blows. Psychology Today points out that people live longer than they did in his day; we can go to the gym and take advantage of modern dentistry. Others latch on to the gloom with something like glee. Shakespeare being rightly considered a source of general wisdom – including the insight that there are more things in heaven and earth than philosophy can ever dream of – the view that human life is both futile and absurd gains authority through his bitter and brilliant expression. To be sure, as Kant taught us, reason has the right, and even the obligation to question authority; this view of coming of age might indeed be Shakespeare’s and nevertheless be wrong. Still I blanched on reading the speech, for crossing swords with Shakespeare is daunting. I reached for my copy of As You Like It, for it had been decades since I’d seen it, and I no longer remembered the context.
It was a revelation. For the speech is spoken by the courtier Jacques, who says of himself ‘I can suck melancholy out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs’. His description of his own melancholy is so melancholic that it turns out to be funny, which is why none of the other characters in the play take him seriously. His melancholy, finally, is a comic device. The fact that Jacques’ melancholy is so extreme as to be ludicrous does not make him dispensable. Without him, the play’s second half would be sappy. His voice counts, for this is the real world, not just Arcadia, or the forest of Ardennes. Shakespeare’s wisdom consists in the fact that he can express such voices perfectly – as we’ve seen, such views of life are all too common – and still end the play with a double wedding. It’s a comedy, after all.
That Shakespeare is not identifying with but mocking Jacques is underscored by the fact that the famous seven ages speech is spoken just before the entrance of the play’s hero, Orlando, bearing the weary servant Adam. Adam’s view of ageing is a far cry from Jacques’:
Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty;
For in my youth I never did apply
Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood; (Act II, scene 3)
Having followed the sort of advice about moderation in drink and food that could be found in any contemporary manual on successful ageing, Adam concludes: ‘Therefore my age is as a lusty winter, / Frosty, but kindly’.
His actions proceed to put the lie to Jacques’ picture of the aged as silly and useless, and our lives as pathetic and predetermined journeys. That’s to say: Jacques’ view of the life cycle gives us no more insight into Shakespeare’s own than Lady Macbeth’s soliloquies give us insight into Shakespeare’s view of morality. Why have generations of readers rushed to identify Jacques’ standpoint with Shakespeare’s, burnishing the bleakest picture of human existence with the authority of the Bard? . . .
I have argued that the picture of growing up as inevitable decline is supported by a web of interests that operate against our coming of age. The tragedy is the way that we constantly collude in it, seeking confirmation for that picture even where it cannot be found. We misread As You Like It to endorse a view that spells our own doom.”—Susan Neiman, Why Grow Up?: Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age (2016)
