Gender Shifts in “All the World’s a Stage”

Hello my beloved readers, readers who I know can hardly await the next entry painstakingly crafted and typed until the very nubs of my fingers are worn thin. On Monday I had reached my self-imposed allotted number of times to speak aloud in class, and so I didn’t get the chance to share something interesting I found as we examined Jacques’ speech. Along the lines of John’s triumphant remark that both schoolboys and snails carry the weight of their worlds on their bitty backs, I hope that my comment will add fodder for those of you embarking on UofL’s production of “As You Like It.”

I would like to direct the attention (no pun intended) towards the end of the speech as Jacques waxes eloquent about how “[t]he sixth age shifts/Into the lean and slippered pantaloon” (2.7). What caught my attention is that use of the word “shifts.” So many words could have been chosen, from moves to swings to half a dozen other thesaurus-supplied options. Instead, however, Shakespeare chose the word “shifts” a word that as a verb indicates a change but as a noun can refer to women’s undergarments. And so, we see that not only does the old man began to suffer that frightful ailment so many of you have to look forward to (the “shrunk shank” and all that good stuff), and not only does that old man have a “childish treble” to his voice, but he is also undergoing a subtle shift in gender (2.7). This change, from a sexless infant to a virile, manly soldier to a womanly geriatric is a significant commentary for Jacques to make in a play all about gender swapping.

It seems as if Jacques here is reinforcing something that Rosalind seems to know through her drag disguise: the carefully crafted categories of man and woman, male and female, are a lot more flexible than most of us feel comfortable acknowledging. For if a man becomes womanly in his older years than it is almost as if he becomes entirely sexless . . . the male and female aspects counteracting against one another. And if this sounds a bit ridiculous, perhaps that is the point. Perhaps, just as the man “plays his part” as a justice, he is also playing his part as a man. This is not to say that men and women don’t possess certain unique common characteristics (as well as body parts) making them too distinct creatures. I’m perfectly content with God’s decision to have both male and female, and I don’t believe that’s Shakespeare’s agenda at all. After all, Rosalind willingly goes back to her female appearance at the end of the play. But perhaps, just perhaps, what Shakespeare is suggesting through the visage of Jacques (and the entire play) is that the categories created by society aren’t quite as rigid or as ‘correct’ as we believe them to be. We are who we are until we are sans everything.