Damien Hirst was a shark in formaldehyde in a vitrine, and sold for £50,000. The shark had been caught by a commissioned fisherman in Australia and had cost £6,000. The exhibition also included "In a Thousand Years". As a result of the show, Hirst was nominated for that year's Turner Prize, but it was awarded to Grenville Davey. Hirst's first major international presentation was in the Venice Biennale in 1993 with the work, "Mother and Child Divided", a cow and a calf cut into sections and exhibited in a series of separate vitrines. He curated the show "Some Went Mad, Some Ran
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"