Flitch of bacon custom had not actually seen one another for over a year since their marriage. As well as to married couples, a flitch of bacon was also given at Whichnoure to men in the religious profession one year and a day following their retirement. A rather better-known example of the awarding of a flitch of bacon to married couples occurred at Little Dunmow Priory in Essex. It is generally held to have been instituted by the family of Robert Fitzwalter in the 13th century. According to Rev. W. W. Skeat in his notes to the fourteenth-century "The Vision of William Concerning Piers
What a piece of work is a man What a piece of work is a man "What a piece of work is man!" is a phrase within a soliloquy by Prince Hamlet in William Shakespeare's play of the same name. Hamlet is reflecting, at first admiringly, and then despairingly, on the human condition. The soliloquy, spoken in the play by Prince Hamlet to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Act II, Scene 2, 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: Hamlet is saying that although humans may appear to think and act "nobly"