“WHAT A PIECE OF WORK IS MAN …
AND YET TO ME,
WHAT IS THIS QUINTESSENCE OF DUST?”

Quintessence takes its name from Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “What a piece of work is a man…. And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?”

Quintessence aspires to the Elizabethan understanding of the word: the fifth element (the element of the heavens and the soul), and the purest essence of a substance.