Ages of Man

About

The Ages of Man is a one-man show performed by John Gielgud featuring a collection of speeches in Shakespeare's plays. Based on an anthology edited by Oxford professor George Rylands in 1939 that organized the speeches to show the journey of life from birth to death, the show takes its title from Jaques' "Ages of Man" speech from As You Like It ("All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players..."). Like the book, the show was divided into three parts: Youth, Manhood and Old Age. Gielgud was inspired to do a Shakespeare recital by his great-aunt, actress Ellen Terry, who performed her own recital titled Shakespeare's Heroines. Gielgud first attempted such a recital during World War II, when he would perform a collection of speeches he called Shakespeare in Peace and War, c...