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The Seven Ages of Man, from Petit's Almanack, 1525
The Seven Ages of Man, from Petit's Almanack, 1525.


On the Life of Man          
Sir Walter Ralegh


What is our life? a play of passion,
Our mirth the musicke of division,
Our mothers wombes the tyring houses be,
When we are drest for this short Comedy,
Heaven the Judicious sharpe spector is,                  5
That sits and markes still who doth act amisse,
Our graves that hide us from the searching Sun,
Are like drawne curtaynes when the play is done,
Thus march we playing to our latest rest,
Onely we dye in earnest, that's no Jest.                            10



[AJ Notes:

musicke of division,, the entr'acte, the music that marked
            the division between acts.
tyring houses, on the Elizabethan stage, the 'tiring house',
            from "attiring house" was the room where the actors
            got dressed before a performance.
spector, spectator, with a play on 'spectre'.
still, always, ever.
latest, last.]
 
Source:
The Anchor Anthology of Sixteenth-Century Verse.
Richard S. Sylvester, Ed.
Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1974. 341.


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Images of London:
London in the time of Henry VII. MS. Roy. 16 F. ii.
London, 1510, the earliest view in print
Map of England from Saxton's Descriptio Angliae, 1579
Location Map of Elizabethan London
Plan of the Bankside, Southwark, in Shakespeare's time
Detail of Norden's Map of the Bankside, 1593
Bull and Bear Baiting Rings from the Agas Map (1569-1590, pub. 1631)
Sketch of the Swan Theatre, c. 1596
Westminster in the Seventeenth Century, by Hollar
Visscher's Panoramic View of London, 1616. COLOR



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