Shakspere knew better than to say that all the world is a
stage, and all the men and women merely players. He had been a player
himself, but only on the stage: _Jaques_ had been a player where he
ought to have been a true man. The whole of his account of human life is
contradicted and exposed at once by the entrance, the very moment when
he has finished his wicked burlesque, of _Orlando_, the young master,
carrying _Adam_, the old servant, upon his back. The song that
immediately follows, sings true: "Most friendship is feigning, most
loving mere folly." But between the _all_ of _Jaques_ and the _most_ of
the song, there is just the difference between earth and hell.--Of
course, both from a literary and dramatic point of view, "The Seven
Ages" is perfect.
Now let us make one positive statement to balance the other: that
wherever we find, in the mouth of a noble character, not stock
sentiments of stage virtue, but appreciation of a truth which it needs
deep thought and experience united with love of truth, to discover or
verify for one's self, especially if the truth be of a sort which most
men will fail not merely to recognize as a truth, but to understand at
all, because the understanding of it depends on the foregoing spiritual
perception--then we think we may receive the passage as an expression of
the inner soul of the writer.
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