Quintessence of Dust 
Category: Writing and Poetry 

This piece comes from Hamlet, Act 2. scene II A room in the 
castle. I heard it when watching the great hilarious and 
touching movie from 1986 called Down and Out In Beverly Hills. 
The movie stars Nick Nolte as a homeless guy who loses his dog 
and ends up trying to commit suicide in a rich Beverly Hills 
Family's pool. The family's mother is played by Bette Midler 
(The Rose), the father by Richard Dreyfuss (Jaws, What About 
Bob). The family takes him in and he provides some form of 
fulfillment to every member of the family. 

Before the movie is finished he will have made love to the wife, 
the daughter, and the latina hottie housekeeper, turned down a 
job and a comfortable life, and gone out back on the steets 
again. He is a man who prefers to be free. Well, during the 
movie he takes millionaire Richard Dreyfuss out to the pier at 
Venice Beach, CA where he and his homeless friends like to hang 
out and drink cheap booze. 

He enjoys a tender quiet moment just talking and bonding with 
Dreyfuss who asks him if he's really a writer in a former life. 
Nolte quotes him these lines from Hamlet and claims he wrote 
them. Whether he wrote them or not, they made me weep at the 
sound of them coming from Nolte's voice. I give you the poem~

I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation
prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the king
and queen moult no feather. I have of late--but
wherefore I know not--lost all my mirth, forgone all
custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily
with my disposition that this goodly frame, the
earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most
excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave
o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted
with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to
me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
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! 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.