Word.ws English Dictionary

all the world's a stage

all the world's a stage proverb: people have roles to play in life just as actors do in the theatre.

all the world's a stage: people have roles to play in life just as actors do in the theatre
Image: Martin Droeshout, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Proverb

all the world's a stage

  1. People have roles to play in life just as actors do in the theatre.
    • But ſtill, perhaps, 'tis ſomewhat new you'll ſay, / For School-Boys to attempt to act a Play. / Why ſhould the Attempt ſurprize! it ſuits our Age, / And more you know, that all the World's a Stage. / Of general Uſe indeed muſt ſeem this Art, / Since every Man was born to act his Part.1766 May, “An Occasional Prologue and Epilogue, Compos'd for the Agreeable Surprize, a Comedy, Translated from the Comic Pieces of Mons[ieur] de Marivaux, and of the French Academy; and Perform'd...
    • Now we meet singers who depict Earth, Moon, Bread, and a pair of actors, played gamely by William Redfield and Rae Allen, who were meant to promote the notion that all the world's a stage. […] The saying that all the world's a stage is true enough. But it doesn't follow conversely that the stage is...1972 November 17, Tom Prideaux, “All Heart and No Place to Go: Dude [theater review]”, in LIFE, volume 73, number 20, Chicago, Ill.: Time Inc., →ISSN, page 30

Examples of all the world's a stage in a sentence

  • "I don't know which one won and which lost." / "My dear, you know that all the world's a stage.2005, R. J. Burke, The Cigarette Killer: A Novel, New York, N.Y.: iUniverse, →ISBN, page 249:
  • Don't they say that all the world's a stage?2014, Mo Yan, translated by Howard Goldblatt, Frog, London: Hamish Hamilton, →ISBN:

Origin of all the world's a stage

Coined by the English playwright William Shakespeare (baptized 1564; died 1616) from the beginning of a monologue delivered by the character Jaques in Act II, scene vii, of the play As You Like It, believed to have been written in 1599: “All the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women, meerly Players; […]”.

Questions about all the world's a stage

What does all the world's a stage mean?
All the world's a stage means people have roles to play in life just as actors do in the theatre.
How do you use all the world's a stage in a sentence?
"I don't know which one won and which lost." / "My dear, you know that all the world's a stage.
What part of speech is all the world's a stage?
All the world's a stage is a proverb.

Words near all the world's a stage in the dictionary

  1. all the way to Sunday
  2. all the while
  3. all the world
  4. all the world and his wife
  5. all the world and Little Billing
  6. all the world's a stage
  7. all there
  8. all things
  9. all things being equal
  10. all things come to those who wait
  11. all things considered

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: all the world's a stage (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-all the world's a stage.ogg.

Cite this entry: “all the world's a stage.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/all_the_world%27s_a_stage. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.