William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare ( b. April 26, 1564 - d, April 23, 1616) was a English playwright, poet, and dramatist.

Division of Seven

It is not Shakespeare only who divided the ages of man into a series of seven, but Nature herself.

By what prophetic instinct Shakespeare pitched upon seven as the number which

suited his fantastic classification of the ages of man, is a question with which we need not be much concerned; but certain it is that he could not have made a more felicitous choice. In periods of sevens the evolution of the races of man may be traced, and the actual number of the objective worlds which constitute

our system, and of which the earth is one, is seven also.

The life of man he divided into seven ages (Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II, Scene 7, l. 143), for "As the moon changes her phases every seven days, this number influences all sublunary beings," and even the Earth, as we know. With the child, it is the teeth that appear in the seventh month and he sheds them at seven years; at twice seven puberty begins, at three times seven all our mental and vital powers are developed, at four times seven he is in his full strength, at five times seven his passions are most developed.