Since the Adelphia folks turned out to be our Helena signal, (with help from the PPT) here is another bit of William S.>
"What a piece of work is man!
How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, 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!
And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
Man delights not me; no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so."
--From Hamlet (II, ii, 115-117)
Hamlet's murderous uncle the King has called for the prince's university friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, seeking their opinion on the source of Hamlet's depression and madness. In this scene in which the king, the friends, Hamlet, Polonius and various ambassadors go in and out, Hamlet addresses Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, forcing them to admit that they have not come out of pure friendship and concern, but because they were summoned. He describes his own recent mood in the classical terms of true depression: "I have lost all my mirth….the earth….seems…..sterile". He bounces back and forth between admiration at the nobility and beauty of man and his own disillusionment at how evil man can be. After uttering the words above he calls man "a quintessence of dust", revealing the true depth of his depression and foreshadowing his suicidal feelings.
For those that aren't following our now famous RatDog version of Shakespeare, here is yesterdays act>
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