The world’s a theatre, the earth a stage,[1]
Which God and nature doth with actors fill:
Kings have their entrance in due equipage,
And some their parts play well, and others ill.
The best no better are (in this theátre),
Where every humour’s fitted in his kind;
This a true subject acts, and that a traitor,
The first applauded, and the last confined;
This plays an honest man, and that a knave,
A gentle person this, and he a clown,
One man is ragged, and another brave:
All men have parts, and each one acts his own.
She a chaste lady acteth all her life;
A wanton courtezan another plays;
This covets marriage love, that nuptial strife:
Both in continual action spend their days:
Some citizens, some soldiers, born to adventer,
Shepherds, and sea-men. Then our play’s begun
When we are born, and to the world first enter,
And all find exits when their parts are done.
If then the world a theatre present,
As by the roundness it appears most fit,
Built with star-galleries of high ascent,
In which Jehove doth as spectator sit,
And chief determiner to applaud the best,
And their endeavours crown with more than merit;
But by their evil actions dooms the rest
To end disgraced, whilst others praise inherit;
He that denies then theatres should be,
He may as well deny a world to me.
THOMAS HEYWOOD.[2]