Polonius, right-hand man of Hamlet's stepfather, King Claudius, has been employed to spy on the prince and report on his very odd behavior. As Polonius begins to deliver to the king and queen the results of his investigation, he embarks on this windy preface. Besides being nonsensical, his speech is self-contradictory: he wastes plenty of time denouncing the time wasted by rhetorical speechifying.
"Brevity is the soul of wit" has become a standard English proverb; in the process, its context has been somewhat neglected. Polonius, though he has high opinions indeed of his "wit" (that is, acumen), is the least brief and one of the least "witty" characters in the play. Freud aptly referred to Polonius as "the old chatterbox" in Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious
Hamlet Act 2, scene 2, 193–206
Polonius diagnoses Hamlet's madness as a form of "love-melancholy," considered a full-fledged disease in the Renaissance. The old man has ordered his daughter Ophelia, Hamlet's girlfriend, to refuse to see the prince or receive his letters, and Polonius now concludes that such refusals have resulted in Hamlet's sorry state. Hamlet, however, only puts on a show.
As a sort of revenge on Polonius, whom he recognizes as one of King
Claudius's numerous spies, Hamlet plays the "satirical rogue" and enumerates the
debilities of age, pointedly making fun of PoloniusHamlet Act 1, scene 3, 78–82
"To thine own self be true"
Polonius, who is deeply impressed with his wordliness, has perfected the arts of protecting his interests and of projecting seeming virtues, his method of being "true" to others. Never mind that this includes spying on Hamlet for King Claudius. Never mind, as well, that many of Polonius's haughty, if not trite, kernels of wisdom are now taken as Shakespeare's own wise pronouncements on living a proper life.
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