SLIPPER'D PANTALOONS

Thank you to my friend John White for contributing this piece. Lovely to have the passage from Shakespeare which talks about the stages of life, hardly different now from when this was published in As You Like It in 1623.

Not yet the slipper’d pantaloon

Over the past few years there has been a growing awareness of the potential contribution that “grey panthers” can make to the recovery of the UK, and indeed the World Economy.

Googling “grey panther” yields many interesting results. There is a “Grey Panther Movement” in the United States. Related phrases are “silver tops” and “grey beards”.

Market researchers and statistical analysts seem to be too focused on age groups. Are you

18-30 31-40 41-50 51-60 over 60

or none of the above?

It is often useful to have an age breakdown of a target population, but a person’s age is less interesting than the broad category of life stage into which they might be classified.

In life generally, I often find myself categorising people along the model of Shakespeare's Seven Ages of Man:

From “As you like it”

“ 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. “

But life expectancy was much shorter in Shakespeare's day. In the 21st century, there is a case for updating the speech to include a (new) sixth stage between the Justice and the Slipper’d Pantaloon. We could call it "Active Retirement" or "Semi-retirement" but we need a more evocative description. “Silver’d panther” perhaps? I invite readers to suggest a new stanza, perhaps with a hint of gender neutrality, which the Bard clearly intended with his opening words but then slid into stereotyping. The Silver’d panther is a stage at which much can be accomplished by people with experience and energy, uncluttered by full-time commitments and unfulfilled ambitions.

John White