Quotations by:
    Heywood, Thomas

The world’s a theatre, the earth a stage,
Which God and Nature do with actors fill.
Kings have their entrance in due equipage,
And some there parts play well, and others ill.

The best no better are (in this theater),
Where every humor’s fitted in his kinde;
This a true subiect acts, and that a traytor,
The first applauded, and the last confin’d;

This plays an honest man, and that a knave,
A gentle person this, and he a clowne,
One man is ragged, and another brave:
All men have parts, and each man acts his own.

Thomas Heywood (1570s-1641) English playwright, actor, author

Apology for Actors, “The Author to his Booke” (1612)
    (Source)

See Shakespeare (1599).