Informant38

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;
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,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth.


{Shakespeare's not using images unfamiliar to his customers. the rabble in the theater weren't Lords and Ladies all. common folk. so the satchel and the schoolboy threw me. I was given to understand as I think were many of my contemporaries that school as a universal fact of youth was invented in the 19th century, based on the factory model. yet here's these boys off to their study, with their satchels, and what's in those we wonder. at the end of the 16th century.}