CBSE Class 9 - English (Communicative) - Poetry - The Seven Ages - Summary (#cbseNotes)

The Seven Ages - Summary

Seven Ages Sculpture at Queen Victoria Street
credits: By Lonpicman (Own work)
[CC BY-SA 3.0 () or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons

About The Poet:

William Shakespeare is viewed as the best author ever. He Paints a distinctive and clear impression of individuals. He gives a philosophical yet straightforward perspective of human life.

Summary:

The poem is a correlation nearby individual life with that to a drama.  Just like a man plays many parts in a melodrama, the man plays many parts as he progresses through different phases of his life. Like a movie or theatre play has entrances and exits thus life also bicker in life and death respectively. With their birth, men and women came to live and play competent extraordinary roles and flow away with death. The parts performed by them are generally seven.

The drama of vivacity starts with the birth of the baby who cries and vomits in the nurses' arms. The next articulate starts when he acts as an academy boy (a student) where he drags and goes stubbornly. The role of a lover is the third platform or stage, complete of passion then woes and heartbreak. The Fourth phase is so as to of a soldier where honour is the utmost important. On the road to ego, he is sudden, quick, fierce and also has short-lived fears. 

Then the next stage is with the aim of after he considers himself fantastically astute and wise. As a consequence, he moves into the last lap (stage) where is shrivelled and has lost his manly strength. Like that of a baby, a whistling sound can be heard since he is devoid of his teeth. The last stage is his path towards annihilation, where he is missing his teeth, eyes, without taste along with after all with nothing.

The central idea:

The poem is the comparison between life and a drama. It shows that everything in the world is transient momentary and not everlasting. Everything completes its cycle in a fixed span of time. Just like for the success of a play all the actors should act unitedly then as well in life everyone must withdraw each mount of life strong in order that life can be a triumph and happiness.