Shakespeare, stained glass windows and Shire Christian School: An insight from the Academic Head

“All the world’s a stage”
(from As You Like It, spoken by Jaques)
William Shakespeare

                               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;
And 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 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 everything.

I distinctly remember the first time I ever heard this. I was in Year 9 and I recall being surprised how words written 400 years earlier managed to vividly capture such familiar and identifiable personalities. The “mewling” baby was so familiar, as was the “whining school boy”. I was amused at the idea of a lover making “woeful ballads (to) his mistress’ eyebrow”. Less familiar were Shakespeare’s portraits of an aging man, one whose “manly voice turns again toward childish treble”, until he reaches “second childishness”. The older I become, the more I witness the inevitable, even cruel reality that Shakespeare was capturing, of a life that cycles back to a weakened and dependent state. A recent visit to the State Library of New South Wales transported me back to this speech. A beautiful stained glass window in the Shakespeare Room captures the ‘Seven Ages of Man’. This vivid rendering of Shakespeare’s depiction of life was a poignant reminder for me, now at a different stage of my own life. No longer the Year 9 student, as a parent and teacher, I now appreciated a new perspective on his words.

I have the privilege of doing bus duty in the mornings. This is a lovely time of day, the sun sitting low, rising above the valley and the air is crisp and fresh. This duty also affords me the chance to see hundreds of parents drop off their children. I can’t help but consider Shakespeare’s depiction of “the whining school boy, with his satchel / And shining morning face, creeping like a snail/ Unwillingly to school”. No matter if we are in Elizabethan England, or Shire Christian School in 2023, our students are innately the same. On their faces I see a range of dispositions; hope, excitement, complacency, tiredness, indifference, optimism, the list goes on. What I also notice though, are the faces of the parents. I have read that getting kids ready in the morning is like a full time job, before you even get to your ‘paid job’! I absolutely know and appreciate the mammoth task that the morning rush can be. Then, as you drop them off, your mind is perhaps already turned to the demands of the day. Yet, as the Academic Head, I want you to know that I see your students. I see their faces. I see the range of emotions they feel about coming to school. I am a mother of three children, all with very different attitudes towards school and learning. I can just imagine the range of emotions on our faces if I were dropping off my kids to school! For the parents of some of our students who may be entering the school with a sense of uneasiness, I know the heaviness on a parent’s heart and mind that can then echo through the day. That inextricable link between a parent’s heart and their child’s wellbeing, desperately hoping and praying that today your child feels contentment, a sense of place and some success. 

One of the first things I need to do in my role at Shire Christian is to acknowledge that the traditional institution of school doesn’t naturally fit all students, that learning is not always easy and it doesn’t occur at a similar pace for all students. So, how do I grapple with this? I come to work every day with the unequivocal belief that learning is learnable. That ALL students have the capacity to learn. Shakespeare’s suggestion that our life ends “sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything” may be adding a sense of pathos to this worldview, yet how true this is when we consider the brief time on earth that we have in our earthly bodies. If, as teachers, we get the “school boy with a shining face” for this short moment of eternity, then I want to make it count. I want the students to know their worth in Christ, that they are made in the image of their Heavenly Father and that their time at Shire Christian is purposeful.

As a school, we are striving towards ensuring every student feels equipped to learn, to be seen as an individual learner, yet also one who will come to learn their place and contribution to a wider learning community. Just as Shakespeare’s insightful words resonate throughout the centuries with insight and poignancy, so too should our students’ words and learning echo throughout their lives and to those around them. As we move forward with learning, underpinned by the foundational Truths of God’s Word, our prayer is for students to know their purpose, to be equipped to serve and to find joy and delight in learning about God’s creation.

Here is a masterful performance of this speech by Andrew Buchanan of the Queensland Theatre. For a wonderful collaborative rendition of this play, take a look at the Royal Shakespeare’s Company’s rendition filmed remotely during lockdown in 2020.

Mrs Natalie Bluhdorn
Academic Head