ROBERT CONQUEST’S REVISION OF SHAKESPEARE. The obituaries for Robert Conquest acknowledge his talent for light verse and often quote this poem:
“First puking and mewling,
Then very pissed off with your schooling,
Then fucks and fights,
Then judging chaps’ rights,
Then sitting in slippers, then drooling.â€
The poem encapsulates the medieval conception of the Seven Ages of Man. This wikipedia entry gives them as:
The Infancy
The Schoolboy
The Lover
The Soldier
The Justice
The Pantaloon
The Old Age
Conquest’s poem is a very abbreviated version of what Jaques says in Shakespeare’s As You Like It:
“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then, the whining school-boy with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then, a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden, and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then, the justice,
In fair round belly, with a good capon lined,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws, and modern instances,
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”