All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players

This is a well known quotation that is associated with William Shakespeare.Shakespeare contributed more phrases and sayings to the English language than any other individual, and most of them are still in daily use.Meaning is life is like a play-we merely go through the stages of our life acting it out."All the world's a stage" is the phrase that begins a monologue from his work As You Like It, spoken by the melancholy Jaques(pronounced "jay-keys" or "jay-kweez") in Act II Scene VII.The idea that "all the world's a stage" was already clicked when Shakespeare wrote As You Like It.

All the world's a stage

Jaques:

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

Shakespeare was born and raised in the picturesque Tudor market town of Statford-on-Avon, a local government and commercial centre with in a larger rural setting., and it is likely that the surrounding woodlands of his boyhood were reflected in the plays As You Like It, with its Forest of Arden.Parish records establish that William Shakespeare was baptized on 26 April, 1564.Simply counting backwards the customary days between birth and baptism in Aglican custom, most reckon that the Bard of Avon was born on 23 April, 1564.