Question

Poetic device in seven ages of man

Answer 1

First, Shakespeare employs metaphorin the lines, "All the world's a stage / And all the men and women merely players . . ."  He directly compares the world to a theater's stage, and all the men and women in the world to actors who perform on that stage.  

There is also a great deal of imagery in the poem.  For example, there is the visual and auditory image of the infant "mewling and puking in the nurse's arms"; there is also visual imagery in the description of the schoolboy's "shining morning face, creeping like snail / Unwillingly to school."  Here, we get a sense of the schoolboy's bright and hopeful face as well as his reluctance to drag himself to school.  Next, Shakespeare uses an auditory image which is also a simile to describe the lover, who is "Sighing like a furnace": we can hear the puffing of a furnace and imagine the lover to be sighing over his love.  

Shakespeare uses another simile to compare the soldier to "the 'pard" (leopard); his beard is scraggly, but there is something lean and hungry about him: he wishes to make his name and secure his reputation.

Shakespeare employs another metaphor to compare old age to "second childishness," which focuses on the ways in which those two stages of life are similar: people in both stages lack teeth, clear sight, and taste.  He says, finally, that they exist "sans everything": an overstatement or hyperbole.