Seven Ages of Man analysis
The Seven Ages of Man” is a dramatic monologue in William Shakespeare’s play “As you Like it.” The monologue is addressed by Jacques who has a gloomy look on life. This poem reveals to the reader the seven stages that a man plays throughout his life. It starts from a baby puking and whining, and ends with a dead man who has lost everything. The success of this piece relies to a great degree on the extended metaphor because it relates our roles in life to acts on a stage. Poetic devices also further enhanced the effect of the monologue. Jacques was addressing to the audience that man is born weak then becomes strong and then weak again which is a poetic device of parallelism. The power of the extended metaphor can be seen very clearly because it significantly enhances the poem. The most distinctive aspect of this poem is the use of the extended metaphor. Shakespeare created an interesting effect through the metaphor because most people at first wouldn’t think of relating stage production to the world because they like they have nothing in common, but Shakespeare 's reveals to the audience that the world and stage production go hand in hand. Jacques addresses the idea of the stage in the beginning, and then relates it to the world by stating the seven ages of man. This functions as an extended metaphor because the relationship between theatre and the world is elaborated to the seven ages. The first sentence that Jacques states is, “All the world’s a stage, and all men and women merely players.” This can be interpreted that everyone in the world has a role to play just like how actors on stage all contribute to the play. An extended metaphor is a type of figurative language that creates an image in the reader’s mind because of the comparison the poem draws verbally. This poem creates a strong image for each of the seven stages due to Jacques choice of words like, “woeful, whining, sans everything,” which produce a vivid image in the reader because the words are