One hundredth of the world is an island, the island of Britain. One hundredth of the world of people, that is. What does this stage look like if we try to view all the players? Imagine the island were reconfigured so we could easily view it all from the air, just below the clouds. Space out everyone equally. An hexagonal arrangement is best. And give them each 50 coloured placards. The kind of placards you see used in mass games. Then ask the crowd a question to which the correct answer for each is just one of their 50 colours. What would you see? It might be a little confusing. What questions would be relevant to all?

Start again. Take just the children. Just the school-age children. Arrange them as a map of Britain in which each is given roughly equal space and has 50 placards. Now ask them: how are they doing at school? What kind of home do they live in? What do their parent(s) do? That makes a little more sense. Different questions make sense to different age groups. There is little point in asking a teenager about retirement. But too many age groups and the answers will not be that different. For old time’s sake let us choose seven stages and play out our acts on them. For an encore we will briefly bring everyone back on at the end.

But what is it that we wish to see on these seven stages? What questions do we want to ask? Well, let us start at the beginning and ask a simple one: are they all merely players? Do all men and women have their part to play, their exits and entrances to make and by and large perform as the playwright directs? Can you see evidence of the stage directions from how they move about the stage? Do they show any signs of autonomy or are they just delivering the lines that have been given them? To what extent are most people merely players?