"
All the world's a stage" is the phrase that begins a
monologue from
William Shakespeare's
As You Like It, spoken by the melancholy Jaques in Act II Scene VII. The speech compares the world to a stage and life to a play, and catalogues the seven stages of a man's life, sometimes referred to as the
seven ages of man:
infant,
schoolboy, lover,
soldier,
justice,
Pantalone and
old age, facing imminent death. It is one of Shakespeare's most frequently quoted passages.