The Winter's Tale to him in a dream and bade him name the girl Perdita. He leaves a fardel (a bundle) by the baby containing gold and other trinkets which suggest that the baby is of noble blood. A violent storm suddenly appears, wrecking the ship on which Antigonus arrived. He wishes to take pity on the child, but is chased away in one of Shakespeare's most famous stage directions: "Exit, pursued by a bear." (It is not known whether Shakespeare used a real bear from the London bear-pits, or an actor in bear costume.) Perdita is rescued by a shepherd and his
All the world's a stage based primarily upon Palingenius' book "Zodiacus Vitae", a school text he would have studied at the Stratford Grammar School, which also enumerates stages of human life. He also takes elements from Ovid and other sources known to him. All the world's a stage "All the world's a stage" is the phrase that begins a monologue from William Shakespeare's "As You Like It", spoken by the melancholy Jaques in Act II Scene VII Line 138. The speech compares the world to a stage and life to a play and catalogues the seven stages of a man's life, sometimes referred to as