Letter from the Rectory - September 2025

Dear Friends,

Recently Mary and I went to the Globe Theatre and watched ‘Twelfth Night’. It was written a couple of years after the new Globe Theatre opened in 1599. That year William Shakespeare had written another comedy, ‘As you like it’.  In Act II Scene VII the melancholy character Jaques delivers his famous monologue beginning, ‘All the world's a stage’.  The speech compares the world to a stage and life to a play cataloguing the seven stages of a man's life - the seven ages of man.

‘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 schoolboy, with his satchel and shining morning face, creeping like snail unwillingly to school. 

And then the lover … 

Then a soldier …

And then the justice, in fair round belly with 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.’

The original Globe Theatre was destroyed by fire 1613, rebuild in 1614 but then closed by Puritan-led Government 1642 before slowly falling into disuse after the Restoration. The reconstructed Globe opened in 1997.  It provides an authentic sense what it must have been like to be a theatregoer then, down to the hard wooden seats without back support.

Even after 450 years, some things haven’t changed as reluctant school boys make their way to school this month.  There is a natural reluctance to accept that we have moved to the next age.  However, the book of Job in the Old Testament reminds us that old age is often linked with wisdom and understanding gained through years of experience: ‘Wisdom is with the aged and understanding in length of days’ (12:12); ‘Those who are older should speak, for wisdom comes with age’ (32:7).

James Campbell