University of Virginia Library

The Author to his Booke.

The world's a Theater, the earth a Stage,

So compared by the Fathers.

Which God, and nature doth with Actors fill,
Kings haue their entrance in due equipage,
And some there parts play well and others ill.
The best no better are (in this Theater,)
Where euery humor's fitted in his kinde,
This a true subiects acts, and that a Traytor,
The first applauded, and the last confin'd
This plaies an honest man, and that a knaue
A gentle person this, and he a clowne
One man is ragged, and another braue.
All men haue parts, and each man acts his owne.
She a chaste Lady acteth all her life,
A wanton Curtezan another playes.
This, couets marriage loue, that, nuptial strife,
Both in continuall action spend their dayes.
Some Citizens, some Soldiers, borne to aduenter,
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 appeares most fit,
Built with starre-galleries of hye ascent,
In which Iehoue doth as spectator sit.
And chiefe determiner to applaud the best,
And their indeuours crowne with more then merit.
But by their euill actions doomes the rest,
To end disgrac't whilst others praise inherit.

No Theater, no world.

He that denyes then Theaters should be,
He may as well deny a world to me.