The world’s a theater, the earth a stage,

Which God and nature doth with actors fill:

Kings have their entrance in due equipage,

And some there parts play well, and others ill.

The best no better are (in this theater),

Where every humor’s fitted in his kinde;

This a true subiect acts, and that a traytor,

The first applauded, and the last confin’d;

This plaies an honest man, and that a knave,

A gentle person this, and he a clowne,

One man is ragged, and another brave:

All men have parts, and each man acts his owne.

She a chaste lady acteth all her life;

A wanton curtezan another playes;

This covets marriage love, that nuptial strife;

Both in continual action spend their dayes:

Some citizens, some soldiers, borne to adventer,

Sheepheards, and sea-men. Then our play’s begun

When we are borne, and to the world first enter,

And all finde exits when their parts are done.

If then the world a theater present,

As by the roundnesse it appears most fit,

Built with starre galleries of hye ascent,

In which Jehove doth as spectator sit,

And chiefe determiner to applaud the best,

And their indevours crowne with more then merit;

But by their evill actions doomes the rest

To end disgract, whilst others praise inherit;

He that denyes then theaters should be,

No theater He may as well deny a world to me.