The world's a stage on which all parts are played.

Pythagoras taught the doctrine of the witness, drashTâ of the Hindus. He said that life is like a gathering at the Olympic Games, where some come to buy and sell, others to play, but the best of them come to look on. This is just like the Upanishads' two birds on a tree, one eating its fruits and the other just looks on. It has reference to the witness self of the Upanishads, the kûTastha of the Gita. In higher Greek religion the doctrine of the life of a spectator holds a high place.

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.

There are men and gods, and beings like Pythagoras.

To quote a Shakespearean cliché, repeated to death because it is so stubbornly true: “All the world’s a stage.” Work is theater. The place where life unfolds to our tragic or comic satisfaction.

I take the world to be but as a stage,
Where net-maskt men do play their personage.

The world’s a theatre, the earth a stage
Which God and Nature do with actors fill.

The world's a stage where God's omnipotence,
His justice, knowledge, love, and providence
Do act the parts.

I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano, A stage where every man must play a part, And mine a sad one.

Since Sputnik and the satellites, the planet is enclosed in a manmade environment that ends "Nature" and turns the globe into a repertory theater to be programmed. Shakespeare at the Globe mentioning "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players" (As You Like It, Act II, Scene 7) has been justified by recent events in ways that would have struck him as entirely paradoxical. The results of living inside a proscenium arch of satellites is that the young now accept the public spaces of the earth as role-playing areas. Sensing this, they adopt costumes and roles and are ready to "do their thing" everywhere." (p.9-10)

If all the world is a stage, where is the audience sitting?

Pythagoras.. was both a very great Philosopher and an able Physician.. whole Motive for the so much commending and introducing his Way of Life, was not any Superstition or Extravagance; but a Desire to be assisting to the Health and good Behaviour of Mankind...

The philosopher places himself at the summit of thought; from there he views what the world has been and what it must become. He is not just an observer, he is an actor; he is an actor of the highest kind in a moral world because it is his opinion of what the world must become that regulates society.

Is it not a noble farce, wherein kings, republics, and emperors have for so many ages played their parts, and to which the whole vast universe serves for a theatre?