Trap des ouderdoms 1848 - 1881

This print, called "Trap des Ouderdoms," or "The Stairway of Old Age," was made by Lutkie and Cranenburg at an unknown date. It’s a symbolic representation of the stages of life from birth to death. Here, life is literally staged. Each decade is a step on a theatrical platform, complete with curtains and a winged figure of time, scythe in hand. We see figures paired off in ways that were likely supposed to be instructive. At 20, a young couple stands upright in the bloom of youth. By 30, they are burdened by a child and other cares. At 70, a figure leans on a cane, a mirror of the figure at 10. At 90, another is slumped, infantile. At 100, they are laid in their coffin. It is a morality play, a genre that was very popular at the time in the Netherlands. What sources would we look at to fully understand its history? Perhaps popular theatre and the era's prints and pamphlets.