Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639)

Translated by John Addington Symonds

THE WORLD’S a theatre: age after age,

Souls masked and muffled in their fleshly gear

Before the supreme audience appear,

As Nature, God’s own Art, appoints the stage.

Each plays the part that is his heritage;

From choir to choir they pass, from sphere to sphere,

And deck themselves with joy or sorry cheer,

As Fate the comic playwright fills the page.

None do or suffer, be they cursed or blest,

Aught otherwise than the great Wisdom wrote

To gladden each and all who gave Him mirth,

When we at last to sea or air or earth

Yielding these masks that weal or woe denote,

In God shall see who spoke and acted best.