And this is so because the
stage to him is life and life a stage. "All the world's a
stage," he says,
"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."*
*As You Like It.
And again he tells us:
"Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more."*
*Macbeth.
It is from Shakespeare's works that we get the clearest picture
of Elizabethan times. And yet, although we learn from him so
much of what people did in those days, of how they talked and
even of how they thought, the chief thing that we feel about
Shakespeare's characters is, not that they are Elizabethan, but
that they are human, that they are like ourselves, that they
think, and say, and do, things which we ourselves might think,
and say, and do.
There are many books we read which we think of as very pretty,
very quaint, very interesting--but old-fashioned.
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