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Test: GED Language Arts (RLA)
Adapted from As You Like It by William Shakespeare (1623)
[This is a monologue by the character Jacques]
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 a snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like a 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 good capon lin'd,
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 slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well sav'd, 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 every thing.
| 1. | What is meant by the underlined selection, "with a woeful ballad, made to his mistress' eyebrow"? |
The lover praises—with a certain melancholy—the beauties of the feminine eye.
The lover is formally complicit in adultery, having a mistress to whom he sighs.
The depression of the lover is completely his own fault because of his misapplied attention to the eyebrows of his mistress.
The lover is overcome with the shape of the female eyebrow and can only sigh to think that he will never have such beauty himself.
The lover's emotions are dependent upon the whims and affections of his lover.
