WHAT A PIECE OF WORK IS A MAN- William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564-1616), one of the world's greatest poets and dramatists, was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. He became a leading member of an acting company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, which later became the King's Men. He wrote plays for his group and also played small roles in those performed by it. The range of his plays is vast. Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, King Lear, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Julius Caesar, Henry V. Measure for Measure, The Tempest are some of his most well-known plays. His poetical works include the narrative poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, and the much-admired sequence of 154 sonnets (1609).
The following piece is from his tragedy, Hamlet. It is a speech made by the hero of the play, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. He is speaking to two friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. These declamatory speeches are often made by characters in Elizabethan plays. Shakespeare frequently adopts this practice in his plays. What a piece of work is a man. How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty2, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god- the beauty of the world, the paragons of animals! And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust?
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