523-45 Jenkins (ed. 1982): “Such parental advice, giving maxims of worldly prudence, was a tradition of the period. Surviving examples from life include a letter to Sir P. Sidney from his father (
Harlean Misc. 7.603-4), Burleigh’s
Precepts for his son Robert Cecil and Raleigh’s
Instructions to his Son (both in
Advice to a Son, ed. L. B. Wright, 1962), and the
Advice to his Son of the 9th Earl of Northumberland (ed. G. B. Harrison, 1930). In Elizabethan literature similar sets of ’precepts’ abound, most often delivered by a father to his son about to set off on his travels. For specimens see Lyly,
Euphues (
Works, ed. Bond, 1:189-90, 286) and
Euphues and his England (2: 30-1, 187-8); Greene,
The Card of Fancy (
Works, ed. Grosart, 4: 21-2) and
Greene’s Mourning Garment (9:137-8); Lodge,
Rosalynd, (1590, BV-B3) and
A Margarite of America (1596, C3-4); Florio,
Second Fruits (1591, ch. 6, pp. 93-105); and in Shakespeare himself,
AWW 1.1.54 ff. The tradition goes back ultimately to Isocrates,
Ad Demonicum, which the 16th century knew well (H. B. Lathrop,
Translations from the Classics, pp. 45-6; SQ, 4: 3-9; 8: 501-6, where G. K. Hunter sets out many parallels). It owed much also to Cato,
Disticha de Moribus ad Filium, a favourite in the Middle Ages, to Erasmus (
Adagia, Disticha Catonis), and to their 16th-century popularizers (see Doris V. Falk in SQ, 18: 23-30). The introductory
these few precepts echoes Lyly, who has often been claimed as Shakespeare’s source, but the correspondences (some set out by Bond, 1: 65) are nowhere verbally remarkable. Clearly no single or particular source need be looked for.
Polonius’s topics—speech, deportment, clothes, friends, quarrels, borrowing—are the regular ones, anticipated in more than one of the works cited, and most of the precepts themselves were recurrent. Several were proverbial maxims, though Shakespeare characteristically phrases them afresh. Only a few of the closer parallels can be given here. With
Give thy thoughts no tongue (524), cf.
Euphues and his England, ’Be not lavish of thy tongue’ (elaborated in 533-4). With
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar (526) cf. Isocrates,
Ad Demonicum, 20 (trans. Bury, 1557), ’Be gentle and pleasant to all men: be familiar but only with the good’; Burleigh,
Precepts, ’Towards thy superiors be humble yet generous; with thy equals familiar yet respective; towards inferiors show much humility and some familiarity’. With the injunction on making and keeping
friends (527-8), cf.
Ad Demonicum, 24, ’Enter into friendship with no man, before you have perfectly searched out, how he hath used his former friends’;
A Margarite of America, ’Learn of Augustus . . ., who was strange and scrupulous in accepting friends, but changeless and resolute in keeping them’;
Rosalynd, ’Choose a friend as the Hyperborei do the metals, sever them from the ore with fire, and let them not bide the stamp before they be current’;
AWW 1.1.59-60, ’keep thy friend Under thy own life’s key’; Tilley T 595. With
do not dull thy palm, etc. (529-30), cf. the proverb, ’Do not give thy hand to every man’ (Tilley H 68). With the injunction on conduct in
a quarrel (530-2), cf.
Ad Demonicum, 43, ’Do your utter endeavour to live in safety. But if it fortune you to come in peril, so defend yourself . . . that it may redound to your renown’; Castiglione,
Courtier, trans. Hoby (Tudor Trans., p. 53), ’Neither let him run rashly to these combats . . . he that goeth headlong to these things and without urgent cause, deserveth very great blame. . . . But when a man perceiveth that he is entered so far that he cannot draw back without burden, he must . . . be utterly resolved with himself, and always show a readiness and a stomach’;
Euphues and his England, ’Be not quarrellous for every light occasion: they [the English] are . . . ready to revenge an injury, but never wont to proffer any: they never fight without provoking, and once provoked they never cease’.
With Give every man thy ear . . . but reserve thy judgment (68-9), cf. Sir H. Sidney, ’Be you rather a hearer and bearer away of other men’s talk, than a beginner, or procurer of speech’;
Euphues and his England, ’It shall be there better to hear what they say, than to speak what thou thinkest’;
Greene’s Mourning Garment, ’Little talk shows much wisdom, but hear what thou canst’;
AWW 1.1.60-1, ’be check’d for silence, But never tax’d for speech’; Tilley M 1277.
Polonius’s advice on dress (70-2) has perhaps an individual note (
costly, rich). Euphues was told ’Let thy attire be comely but not costly’. But the warning against excess and self-display is entirely traditional. Cf.
Ad Demonicum, 27, ’Be neat and cleanly in your apparel; but not brave and sumptuous’;
A Margarite for America, ’in thy apparel princely without excess’. And
Polonius is not the first to cite a proverb about the apparel and the man: Peter Idley (15th century), in
Instructions to his Son, requiring dress to be ’cleanly’ but not ’too nice and gay’, explains that ’clothing oft maketh man’ (lines 99-105). Cf. Tilley A 283; Moryson,
Itinerary (1907 edn), 2: 262, ’The wise man hath taught us, that the apparel in some sort shows the man’. With advice against borrowing (540), cf. Burleigh’s ’Neither borrow money of a neighbour or friend but rather from a mere stranger, where paying for it thou mayest hear no more of it’. That
loan oft loses both itself and friend (541) is a piece of folk-wisdom, for which Kittredge quotes the jingle, ’I had my silver and my friend, / I lent my silver to my friend, /I asked my silver of my friend, / I lost my silver and my friend.’ Cf. Tilley F 725. The final precept,
to thine own self be true (543), has proved ambiguous. Interpretation has ranged from a noble ideal of integrity to a cynical injunction to pursue self-interest. But the tradition of the maxim puts its meaning (Be constant) beyond doubt. Cf. Cato,
Disticha, as rendered, e.g., by Taverner (1540, etc.), ’He that striveth with himself shall full evil agree with other men . . . he that . . . is with every puff of wind carried now hither now thither, is not meet for the company of honest men’; and see D. V. Falk,
SQ, 18: 29. Such conventional precepts are entirely appropriate to
Polonius as a man of experience. It is a mistake to suppose they are meant to make him seem ridiculous. Their purpose, far more important than any individual characterization, is to present him in his role of father. What is being dramatized in the advice as in the blessing is his son’s departure from home and by impressing upon us here the relation between father and son the play is preparing for the emergence of Laertes later as the avenger who will claim Hamlet as his victim.”