Hello. This is Zina, and welcome to a new podcast called The Beauty of Shakespeare which is part of The Beauty of Things Substack newsletter. This episode is dedicated to my cousin Tereso, a wonderful subscriber and supporter of everything here.
I recently announced that I was going to embark on a significant project: to read aloud every Shakespeare sonnet and then attempt to summarize each one in an original heroic couplet. By the end I am hoping to be able to string all of these together to make a collage poem.
Before I begin the sonnet project I thought I would start with a famous monologue from William Shakespeare's comedy As You Like It, spoken by the melancholy Jaques in Act II Scene VII.
Jaques looks like the French name but is, of course, Anglicized for the play. For the purposes of talking about him I shall say “jay-QUEEZ” but there are times in the play when the scansion requires his name to be a single syllable— “JAKES”. (I have also heard his name pronounced “jah-KWEHZ” but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ whatever at that point.)
Jaques is known as being a bit of a pessimistic outsider, as you may be able to tell from reading the text. His worldview at the end of the monologue is quite dim, but it is to be contrasted with the immediate entrance of Adam, an elderly character who has the more positive qualities of an aged man—thus highlighting how much of an exaggeration Jaques’s worldview must be.
I am choosing to begin my sonnet project with this piece, not because of its negative outlook, but to highlight the difference between Shakespeare’s dialogue and Shakespeare’s sonnets—since he is exceedingly well known for his plays as well as his poetry. This monologue is strongly iambic but not completely so, since regular speech is not strictly in iambs. The words draw you into a rhythm of speech that indicates a “listen to me—this is important” quality.
And so now, without further ado, I give you a little bit of Much Ado…
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.
Then the whining schoolboy, 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 honor, 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 slippered 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.
"All the world's a stage..."