What does it mean when Hamlet says what is this quintessence of dust?

Answer 1

In order to understand this quotation, you must do three things. First you must go to a dictionary and look up "quintessence". Go ahead. I'll wait.

OK, now you know what the word means, you need to know that according to Christian teachings, the first man was made from dirt. And essentially, according to Christian thought, people are nothing more than animated bags of dust. And after we die, we go back to being dirt, hence the line from the funeral service "ashes to ashes; dust to dust".

Now read the whole passage the quotation is taken from, starting with the words "What a piece of work is a man?" (It's about halfway through the immensely long Act 2 Scene 2 of Hamlet, if you are looking) What does that first bit mean? "What a piece of work is a 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 . . ." Yes, you may have to look up "paragon", but even if you don't you should get what Hamlet is talking about here. He's praising the human race. In fact he's heaping praise on humanity, saying how wonderful people are as a species. And then he drops the other shoe: "and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?" Hamlet doesn't care how great the human race appears to be. To him it's just the "quintessence of dust." And you know what that means.

As always, however, when looking at lines from a play, it is not enough just to understand the words and how they fit into the context of the sentence, but we have to look at the character who is saying them, and who he is saying them to. At this point in the play, two of Hamlet's schoolfellows, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, have been hired by the King to spy on Hamlet. But Hamlet has outed them and is messing with their minds so they will tell the King what Hamlet wants the King to hear. Therefore he tells them that he is terribly depressed, that he has "foregone all custom of exercise" (which we know to be a lie--he tells us in Act 5 that he has "kept in continual practice") and that "Man delights not me", which is the line immediately after "What to me is this quintessence of dust?" Basically this is all a show for the benefit of Ros and Guil.