The Seven Ages of Man (painting series)

The Seven Ages of Man is a series of paintings by Robert Smirke, derived from a monologue from William Shakespeare's As You Like It, spoken as the melancholy Jaques in Act II Scene VII. The phrase begins as all the world's a stage. The stages referred are: infant, schoolboy, lover, soldier, justice, pantaloon and old age.

Painted between 1798 and 1801, they depict the journey of life in its various forms. They were produced for the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery, and engravings by Peltro William Tomkins, John Ogborne, Robert Thew, Peter Simon the Younger and William Satchwell Leney based on Smirke's paintings were included in the gallery's folio edition of Shakespeare's work.

In 1796, Robert Smirke agreed to paint William Shakespeare's The Seven Ages of Man for John and Josiah Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery.

The character Jaques expresses the ages as the following stages:

In this stage the man is born as a helpless baby and knows little but waiting as a man in embryo to spring out.In the role of infancy the child is crying...v

Here, he begins his schooling; the charms of helpless innocence cease. It is in that stage of life that he begins to go to school. He is unwilling to leave the protected environment of his home as he is still not confident enough to exercise his own discretion.

The lover is depicted as a young man composing his love poems, shown beneath two pictures of Cupid, the god of love and on the left, Romeo-Juliet balcony scene.In this stage he is always maudlin, expressing his love in a fatuous manner. He makes himself ridiculous in trying to express his feelings.The child in this stage, cares for its beloved the most and is quite concerned about it and is ready to sacrifice its life also to show its affectionate towards it.

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