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 woful 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. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lined,

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 saved, a world too wide

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 teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): As You Like It. Act ii. Sc. 7.

I have had playmates, I have had companions,

In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days.

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

Charles Lamb (1775-1834): Old Familiar Faces.

Ful wel she sange the service devine,

Entuned in hire nose ful swetely;

And Frenche she spake ful fayre and fetisly,

After the scole of Stratford atte bowe,

For Frenche of Paris was to hire unknowe.

Geoffrey Chaucer (1328-1400): Canterbury Tales. Prologue. Line 122.

A wise man poor

Is like a sacred book that's never read,—

To himself he lives, and to all else seems dead.

This age thinks better of a gilded fool

Than of a threadbare saint in wisdom's school.

Thomas Dekker (1572-1632): Old Fortunatus.

To tell tales out of schoole.

John Heywood (Circa 1565): Proverbes. Part i. Chap. x.

The Satanic School.

Robert Southey (1774-1843): Vision of Judgment. Original Preface.