“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.”
The same notion is repeated in the Merchant of Venice, act. i. sc. 1, l. 77, vol. ii. p. 281, when Antonio says,—
“I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano;
A stage where every man must play a part,
And mine a sad one.”
In England, as elsewhere, emblematical carvings and writings preceded books of Emblems, that is, books in which the art of