The Seven Ages of Man

The Seven Ages Extra Questions and Answers Short Answer Type

Answer the following questions briefly.

Question 1.
In what sense are men and women merely players on the stage of life?
Answer:
Men and women on earth are merely players in the drama of life. At birth, they enter
the stage and on their death, they leave it. They play seven roles on the stage
depending upon their age. Man passes through seven stages according to his age.
Each age has certain special characteristics that man follows. Thus, he plays the
part assigned to him.

Question 2.
What role does the soldier play?
Answer:
The soldier comes on to the stage of life at the fourth stage. He swears all the time.
The soldier is touchy * about his honour and is always ready to defend it. He is short-
tempered and ambitious. He is willing to even risk his life for his reputation.

Question 3.
What does the poet mean when he says ‘Full of wise saws and modern instances’.
Answer:
The poet is describing the judge and he says that the judge is full old enough to start
passing his knowledge in the form of advice, proverbs and stories. He is also still
young enough to make references to things that are contemporary.

The Seven Ages Extra Questions and Answers Long Answer Type

Question 1.
What is the theme of “The Seven Ages of Man” by William Shakespeare?
Answer:
The poem deals with the theme of growing up and growing old. The poet talks a lot
about the changes that the body and the mind go through as a man grows old. He
talks about changing priorities, from the child being concerned about lessons and
then love and finally money and security. At another level, the poem talks about the
inevitability of change. Man constantly changes and death is inevitable—
Shakespeare mentions I “mere oblivion” in the ending lines, giving some sort of
finality to his ideas, showing that you can live your life, but everyone has to die.

Question 2.
Bring out the parallels between the life of man and actors on a stage?
Answer:
The world is a stage, and that all human beings are actors on that stage. Like actors,
we too have our entrances and exits; that is, we are born and we die, and like them
we play different roles from the day that we are born. The stage thus stands for life
(we say it is a metaphor for life) and the actors can represent all of us at different
stages or ages in our lives.

Compare the parallelism to the journey of life in the poem “The Brook” with “The
Seven Ages of Man”? The poem deals with the theme of growing up and growing
old. The poet talks a lot about the changes that the body and the mind go through as
a man grows old. He talks about changing priorities, from the child being concerned
about lessons and then love and finally money and security.

At another level, the poem talks about the inevitability of change. Man constantly
changes and death is inevitable—Shakespeare mentions “mere oblivion” in the
ending lines, giving some sort of finality to his ideas, showing that you can live your
life, but everyone has to die. Similarly in The Brook, the poet compares the brook’s
journey with man’s journey of life. Like the brook, man is energetic, lively and moves
swiftly when he is young but slows down later on in life just like the brook does
before it empties into the river.