Can someone please explain this to me?

What is our life? a play of passion
Our mirth, the music of division.
Our mother's wombs the tiring-houses be
Where we are dressed for this short comedy.
Heaven the judicious sharp spectator is,
That sits and marks still who doth act amiss;
Our graves that hide us from the searching sun
Are like drawn curtains when the play is done.
Thus march we playing to our latest rest;
Only we die in earnest--that's no jest.

Compare Shakespeare's As You Like It > Act II, scene VII:


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 lined,
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 saved, 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.

Raleigh was a learned gentleman adventurer who was at one time a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I, but ended up being beheaded for supposed treason. He had plenty of time while imprisoned in the tower to reflect on the ironies of life in the Elizabethan Age. In this poem he describes life as comic theatre, but makes the end point that dying is no joke.

I think 'music of division' refers to his view that laughter creates more conflict than unity, because people are amused by the failings and misfortunes of others.

'tiring' in 'tiring-house' is surely short for 'attiring'. He is comparing a mother's womb to a gentleman's outfitting establishment, or perhaps a backstage dressing-room.

Given that the whole poem is based on the metaphor of life being a comic play ending with the actors' deaths, another apposite quote from Shakespeare is from 'The Tempest':

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.



Post Edited (01-10-05 07:04)

Good word, apposite. Speaking of which:

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Macbeth Act V, scene V