Discussion of the sonnet

1. Speak of the main talking point of the poem.

2. Into how many parts can the sonnet be divided? Define each part.

3. The poet believes that the human beauty is not subject to time. How is it accentuated?

4. Prove that the beauty of nature changes from season to season. Find the thematic group of words, epithets, repetition, intensifiers and the rhetorical question.

5. The mortality of the nature's beauty is contrasted to the immortality of the human beauty. How is this contrast brought home to the reader?

6. How is the idea of the immortality of the human beauty enforced? Pay attention to the forms of negation.

7. Speak of the role of archaic words and forms.

8. Comment on the conclusion drawn in the last two lines. Does it present a convergence of stylistic devices?

9. What notions that make the sonnet philosophical are described?

All the World's a Stage*

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. At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms;

And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard (1),

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the Cannon's mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,

With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;

His youthful hose, well sav'd, a world too wide (2)

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness, and mere oblivion, -

Sans (3) teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

* Shakespeare W. All the World’s Stage: Poems to Enjoy. Москва, Просвещение, 1970, pp. 160-162.

Notes

(1) pard - leopard;

(2) a world too wide – yж очень широки;

(3) sans(ycm.) - без.