Thou canst not then be false to any man.
(Hamlet, I, iii)
What an example of pressed and hurrried fatherly advice, yet the chain of maxims and epithets does more to expose the folly and naivete of an old courtier mimicking the plain platitudes of royal court life rather than instructing a young son in the ways of the world.
Perhaps an English teacher could expound on this passage by linking any father’s frantic attempts to give last-minute insights to a young charge about to leave the safety of the homefront. The mother eagle usually pushes out the egrets, then swoops down at the last minute if the chick fails to catch the current and take flight. Here, Polonius takes great pains to make the most of the final moments he has with his son Laertes going to France, and unlike the mother eagle, he knows that he will not be there to catch his son if he falls or fails or flails about through it all. Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportion’d thought his act.
What can man do if he has not pondered it first? What is a man to do, having thought before he has acted. “Unproportion’d” encircles a wide, perhaps disproportionate, set of ideas, including the unspoken matter of what standard young Laertes is to live by. A proportion is a matter of scale, a scale measures something unchanging. What values, what eternal verities can a courtier confer upon his son, exiting on a frantic venture to France? All advice is useless if a man is attached to nothing but the words of a parent who will be readily absent. The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;But do not dull thy palm with entertainmentOf each new-hatch’d, unfledg’d comrade.
“Hoops of steel”, so does Father Polonius intimiate to his son the basis for having and holding his friendships. Yet what friendships will this man find or confront in his voyage? “Adoption tried” speaks of a comfort stronger than mere amity. Friends, however, cannot be fathers, nor should they be sons, in that friends will not take direction nor give the proper rebuke which every man seeks, or at least should desire. Even after describing the vetting process for every aquaintance, the aged courtier then tells his son not to “dull his palm with entertainment.” This metaphor turns on wasting one’s substance as well as one’s character, as the dulling of the palm may suggest bribery as well as frivolity. BewareOf entrance to a quarrel, but, being in, Bear ‘t that th’ opposed may beware of thee.
“Beware” begins and ends this precept. “Be aware” cannot be a weary exercise altogether without the resolution of standing on who you are, which supplies what you have and then what you do. Avoid a fight, yes indeed sound warning, but what would Laertes fight for? He will strike down Hamlet in the end, egged on by the false ploys of a false king who usurped the throne through adultery and assasination.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice;Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.
“Every man”, “each man”, in contrast to “few” and “reserve”, diminish the son who would do great things abroad for his country and king. What is “every man”? What insight is borne out for the better in any man’s life as he gives heed to such a general audience as the world at large, and every man he meets? Here, as elsewhere in this soliloquy dressed up as eternal saged saws, Polonius’ advice is better suited for the life of fawning noble in a court, not a man about to make his mark in a strange and sometimes hostile world. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;For the apparel oft proclaims the man.
No advice could be more uninformed or ill-suited than the attention one should pay at length to one’s apparel. “The apparel oft proclaims the man,” Polonius claims. Yet throughout the remainder of his lines on stage, he spends more time being taken in by the wear and witness of men on the outside. He cannot discern that Hamlet is no madman, but a man who is mad at the “rotten state of Denmark”. He hides, to his fatal peril, behind a curtain, where the disturbed and brooding prince hacks him away. “The clothes make the man,” a casual take on this verse, is just as bereft of wisdom as well as wit, for the appearance is mere pretense compare to the purpose or the persuasion of the man underneath.
Neither a borrower, nor a lender be;For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This wise word would have well-prospered many kings and kingdoms, if well-heeded. A man who has friends indeed loses them easily through loans and debts extended at length. This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Here rests a crowning indictment. A man cannot be true to himself if he is not true to anything greater. This irony, implicit in man’s search for identity and stability, tarnishes the relationships of Hamlet’s protagonists, where Claudius and Gertrude have proven themselves false to themselves and their kingdom in succumbing to real, yet immoral, desires for each other. Hamlete acnnot be true to his father, unless at great cost to his own conflict conscience. Polonius, a member of the court, is not there to make truth a high priority in any case. “To thine own self be true” rings forth the tuning that would render even discord in this play mute or harmonious, yet the main players, deaf to their own faults, immune to musing over their failures, only descend further into a cacophony of conflict and death.
Polonius’ advice would merit far more than the last-ditch attempt to prepare a youth for the adultered world, yet either his musings are bland, blunt, or blind to the weak character or dubious title of men, where he is often promoting the way that others must conduct themselves, yet absent a standard greater than politic or policy, do not long remain or sustain themselves.