"Circus"

Backdated, archival post

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A few days ago, I read this epigram by Palladas in my literary anthology:

This life a theater we well may call,
Where every actor must perform with art;
Or laugh it though and make a farce of all,
Or learn to bear with grace his tragic part.

At first, I just thought that it was possible that this was the origin of Shakespeare's "All the world's a stage..." because he took a lot of stuff from the Greeks.  But then I became aware of the similarity between this ("All the world's a stage / And all the men and women merely players") and some lines in the first verse of Argent's "Circus":  "In the circus / Each must play a part."

I'd thought that I'd written about "All the world's a stage..." before, but not about "Circus," so I went looking through my old posts and found this one that mentions "All the world's a stage..." and "A Moment in Time" (and its "Life is a stage where / We all just act a part") from Breathe Out, Breathe In.

Those lines from "Circus" don't seem as strong a reference to Shakespeare as those in "A Moment in Time," but they do still seem to be one.  So now there are two Zombies/Argent songs that reference those Shakespeare lines.