What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, 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 paragon of animals!

The phrase "What a piece of work is a man!" comes from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Act II, scene II, and it is often used in reference to the whole speech containing the line. The monologue, spoken in the play by Prince Hamlet to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, follows in its entirety; rather than appearing in blank verse, the typical mode of composition of Shakespeare's plays, the speech appears in straight prose: The above text comes... more

The phrase "What a piece of work is a man!" comes from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Act II, scene II, and it is often used in reference to the whole speech containing the line. The monologue, spoken in the play by Prince Hamlet to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, follows in its entirety; rather than appearing in blank verse, the typical mode of composition of Shakespeare's plays, the speech appears in straight prose: The above text comes from the First Folio. In the Second Quarto, however, the sentence beginning "What a piece of work is a man" is punctuated very differently: J. Dover Wilson, in his notes in the New Shakespeare edition, observed that the Folio text "involves two grave difficulties", namely that according to Elizabethan thought angels could apprehend but not act, making "in action how like an angel" nonsensical, and that "express" (which as an adjective means "direct and purposive") makes sense applied to "action", but goes very awkwardly with "form and moving"... less