All the World's a Stage... for Dignity

All right, I’m late on my blog post again. But honestly, this one took me awhile to think about. Not that that’s really an excuse...

Anyway, I finally decided to use this picture. It’s the Antonian stage. Just the bare, quiet, stage. Why does this represent dignity to me? Because in our culture, all the world literally is a stage. Everyone wants to be famous. There are photojournalists and reality TV shows and YouTube, giving everyone the chance to stand out, no matter what the cost...including dignity.

But to me, this picture represents my definition of dignity. Dignity is inherent to all humans, but it would not exist without a social aspect, as well. Dignity is attributed to people based on their social contexts. Being on stage illustrates this. On the stage, actors give up their dignity for the sake of performance. For the duration of a play, they take on another dignity...the dignity of their character... and it is up to the audience to attribute that dignity. An actor may do undignified things on stage, but the indignities are attributed to the character. The stage allows people, for a brief moment, to become other people. Therefore, dignity is something that cannot exist without other people to say that it exists.

Now the picture brings up more questions. Do characters in plays have dignity at all, since they’re not real? Or are they given dignity by the playwright, then the actor, then the audience? If all the world is a stage, (as Jaques says in his famous speech in As You Like It), and performance is the experience of being human, are we all just performing our dignities? Does it really exist?

DUKE SENIOR.

Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy;

This wide and universal theatre

Presents more woeful pageants than the scene

Wherein we play in.

JAQUES.

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 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.

 This blog prompt has really made me ask more questions about the nature of dignity. I know that it’s the end of the semester, and we’re supposed to be taking stands, and I thought that I had, but having to encapsulate what I thought was my stand into a photograph really made me stop and think. How do I illustrate what I think dignity is?

I went back to what I know. I know performance and I know this stage. And now, because of this class, I know how to connect things to dignity...