All the worlds a stage is the phrase that begins a monologue from William Shakespeare's As You Like It, spoken by the melancholy Jaques in Act II Scene VII.
The speech compares the world to a stage and life to a play, and catalogues the seven stages of a man's life, sometimes referred to as the Seven Stages of man: infant, schoolboy, lover, soldier, justice, pantaloons and old age, facing imminent death. It is one of Shakespeare's most frequently quoted passages.
