523-46 Gildon (1710, p. 398) praises the soundness of Polonius’ advice to both son and daughter (see CN 560).

523-46 Hill (The Prompter [27 May 1735]:1): “No Man that was really a Fool could ever make such a Speech, which would become the Mouth of the wisest and most experienced.”

523 these fewe precepts] Stubbs (1736, p. 20): “This Assertion of mine [that the blessing cannot be a comedic moment] will appear indisputable, if my Reader considers well the whole Tenour of this Scene, with the grave and excellent Instructions which it contains, from Polonius to Laertes, and from both to Ophelia. It is impossible that any Buffoonery could be here intended, to make void and insignificant so much good Sense expressed in the true Beauties of Poetry.”

523-45 Warburton (ed. 1747): “We have said what is the character of Polonius; and it is allowed on all hands to be drawn with wonderful life and spirit, yet the unity of it has been thought by some to be grosly violated in the excellent Precepts and Instructions which Shakespear makes his statesman give to his son and servant in the middle of the first, and beginning of the second act. But I will venture to say, these criticks have not entered into the poet’s art and address in this particular. He had a mind to ornament his scenes with those fine lessons of social life; but his Polonius was too weak to be the author of them, tho’ he was pedant enough to have met with them in his reading, and fop enough to get them by heart and retail them for his own. And this the poet has finely shewn us was the case, where, in the middle of Polonius’s instruction to his servant, he makes him, tho’ without having received any interruption, forget his lesson, and say [quotes 942-8] which shews they were words got by heart which he was repeating. Otherwise closes in the consequence, which conveys no particular idea of the subject he was upon, could never have made him recollect where he broke off. This is an extraordinary instance of the poet’s art, and attention to the preservation of Character.”

I repeat this in Polonius doc. and also in 942.

523-45 Dodd (1752, 1:1-2) <p. 1>: ‘Be thou blest, Bertram, and succeed thy father In manners as in shape; thy blood and virtue Contend for empire in thee, and thy goodness Share with thy birth-right. Love all; trust a few; Do wrong to none; be able for thine enemy </p. 1><p. 2> Rather in power than use; and keep thy friend Under thy own life’s key: be check’d for silence; But never tax’d for speech—’ </p. 2>

<n. 1> <p. 1> He compares the Countess Rossillion’s advice to that by Hector to Astyanax exhorting the son to be like the father. </p.1>

<p. 2> “In like manner Aeneas exhorts his son to the imitation of his father’s virtues . . . ‘True toil and virtue, learn, my son, from me.’ Trapp. And Ajax in Sophocles says to his son; ‘May’st thou, my son, in all things, save his fortune, Succeed and imitate thy father.’ I cannot help remarking the excellency of Shakespear’s advice, both here [in AWW] from the mother, and in Hamlet, from the father; . . . In the fifth line in [AWW] Be able, &c.—the meaning is, —‘rather be able to revenge yourself on your enemy in ability, than in the use of that ability: have it in your power to revenge, but shew god-like in not using that power.’” </p. 2> </n.1>

BWK: I placed this last in revenge doc. Ed. note: Dodd’s analogues show how different Polonius’ advice is; he never says “be like me’; he never exhorts his son to duty and honor.

523-46 Johnson (ed. 1765): Warburton’s “account of the character of Polonius though it sufficiently reconciles the seeming inconsistency of so much wisdom with so much folly, does not perhaps correspond exactly to the ideas of our authour. The commentator makes the character of Polonius, a character only of manners, discriminated by properties superficial, accidental, and acquired. The poet intended a nobler delineation of a mixed character of manners and of nature. Polonius is a man bred in courts, exercised in business, stored with observation, confident of his knowledge, proud of his eloquence, and declining into dotage. His mode of oratory is truly represented as designed to ridicule the practice of those times, of prefaces that made no introduction, and of method that embarrassed rather than explained. This part of his character is accidental, the rest is natural. Such a man is positive and confident, because he knows that his mind was once strong, and knows not that it is become weak. Such a man excels in general principles, but fails in the particular application. He is knowing in retrospect, and ignorant in foresight. While he depends upon his memory, and can draw from his repositories of knowledge, he utters weighty sentences, and gives useful counsel; but as the mind in its enfeebled state cannot be kept long busy and intent, the old man is subject to sudden dereliction of his faculties, he loses the order of his ideas, and entangles himself in his own thoughts, till he recovers the leading principle, and falls again into his former train. This idea of dotage encroaching upon wisdom, will solve all the phaenomena of the character of Polonius..”

523-46 Gentleman (1770, 1: 16-17): <p. 16> “as Polonius is introduced to hasten his son on board, I could wish those excellent maxims for youth in the first scene of the second act, and which are always omitted in representation, were transposed to this place, and given personally by the father to his son: such a treasure of useful instruction should upon no ac- </p. 16> <p. 17> count be lost to the stage.”</p. 17>

523-45 these fewe precepts] Gentleman (ed. 1773): “There is a compact richness of instruction set forth in these lines, which well deserve attention in public, and perusal in private.”

523-45 these fewe precepts]

523 these fewe precepts] Capell (1774, 1:1:124): “It has been observ’d, (but where, is not remember’d at present) that the ‘precepts’ are much too good for the speaker; and that we have no other way of making them consistent with character, but to imagine them things he has con’d, and comes prepar’d with to make a figure at parting: and the observation is not ill-grounded; for the moment he’s at the end of his lesson, we are regal’d with a style very different, and flowers of speech is his way . . . . ”

523-45 These . . . man] Griffith (1777, 2:281): “Polonius, on his son’s going to travel, gives him admirable rules and instructions for his conduct in life.”

523-45 Caldecott (ed. 1819): “ . . . the lesson of life given to Laertes is a perfect whole, delivered with all the closeness and gravity of a philosophic discourse: Plenius et melius Chrysippo et Crantore: and had it been dictated by a mind any way enfeebled, at some point or other we should, as here, have seen "wisdom," according to Dr. Johnson, "encroached upon by dotage." But what he offers is a mere advocating, is what may be said, rather than what either ought to be said, or in fact exists; it is prize-fighting, and nothing like a search after truth. For, when elaborate discussion has been employed to give a sense not obvious but different from the generally received meaning, if that interpretation does not leave its impression long upon any plain mind, the presumption is that it cannot be sound. See note 71.”

523-46 Caldecott (ed. 1819): “These golden precepts, suited indeed to the occasion, and the rank of the person that delivers them, very ill accord with the character he supports, and the measure of intellect allotted to him in almost every other part of this play; in which he appears to be, as Hamlet [2.2, 3.2, and 3.4] describes him, a ‘tedious old fool,’ ‘a wretched rash fool,’ ‘a foolish prating knave.’ At the same time, that in this view we insist upon his tiresome expostulation with the king and queen in [2.2], we must also observe that our author puts into his mouth, in his conversation with Reynaldo, [2.1], the very words of Shallow to Bardolph, ‘Well said, and it is well said, &c.’ [2H4 3.2.]. See also the note at the end of the fragment of the play in [2.2.] Haml.”

523-45 These . . . man] Knight (ed. 1839): “It has been objected to these maxims of Polonius, that their good sense ill accords with his general character, his tediousness, his babbling vanity. It is remarkable that in the quarto of 1603, the ‘precepts’ are printed in inverted commas, as if they were taken from some known source; or, at any rate, as if Polonius had delivered them by an effort of memory alone.”

523-45 These . . . man] MacDonell (1843, p.24): “ . . . the advice which [Polonius] gives to his son in going upon his travels, is . . . replete with wisdom embodying maxims, worthy to be cherished, by every young man entering upon the great theatre of life, but notwithstanding this parental affection, tempered seemingly with a judgment, that implies much experience and knowledge of the world, the debasement of mind, which is associated with the general character of Polonius, leads us to consider these precepts offered by him to his children, merely as the offspring of a sordid and selfish feeling, adopted with the view of promoting the interest of himself and family, for, involved as he was in the base intrigues of a licentious court, his heart must have never felt the influence of sentiments, imbued with so much excellence.”

523-45 These . . . man] Dyce (1844, pp. 207-9): <p. 207> “Not at all ‘remarkable.’ In the quartos of the present play (excepting that of 1603) a speech of the Queen, act iv. sc. 5, is ‘printed with inverted commas:’ I now cite it from 4to, 1605: [quotes 2762-5] (the 4to of 1637 gives it with double commas.)

“In various other early plays, the gnomic portions are so distinguished: for instance, in Marston’s Malcontent, 1604, where, among several longer passages printed with inverted commas, the following occur; ‘Mead. Thou rise? Mal. I, at the resurrection. “No vulgar seede, but once may rise, and shall,“ No King so huge, but fore he die, may fall.” ’ Sig. B4 (c ed. of the same date, with addition). </p. 207> <p. 208> ‘This both the liuing and the dead offends, “Sharpe surgery where naught but death amends.” ’ Sig. d (d2). ‘Mead. Why, we are both but dead, the Duke hates us, “And those whome Princes doe once groundly hate, “Let them prouide to dye, as sure as fate: “Prevention is the hart of pollicie.”’ Sig. d3 (d4).

“Nor was this custom of marking maxims by inverted commas confined to dramatic pieces only: in Watson’s EKATOMPAqIA, or Passionate Centurie of Loue, n.d., we find; ‘And yet I coulde, if sorrowe woulde permit, Tell when and howe I fix’t my fancie first, And for whose sake I lost both will and wit, And choase the path, wherein I liue accurst: But such like deeds would breed a double soare. “For love gainesaide growes madder then before. But note herewith, that so my thoughts are bound, &c.’ Son. xxxviii. ‘Then peerelesse Dame, the grounde of all my griefe, Voutsafe to cure the cause of my complaint: No fauoure els but thine can yeelde reliefe. But help in time, before I further fainte. “For Daunger grows by lingringe till the last, “And phisick hath no helpe, when life is past.’ Son. lix. and in Drayton’s Barons Warres; ‘And they which could the Complements of state To Greatnesse gaue each Ceremonious Rite, To their Designes to giue the longer date, The like againe in others to excite; In entertaining Loue, they welcom’d Hate, And to one Banquet freely both inuite: “A Princes Wealth by spending still doth spred, “Like to a Brooke by many Fountaines fed.’ Canto vi. st. 14. ‘As Fortune meant, her Power on March to show, And in her Armes to beare him through the Skye, By him to daunt whos’euer sat below, Hauing aboue them mounted him so hye: </p.208 > <p. 209 > Who at his beck was he that did not bow, If at his feet he did not humbly lye? “All things concurre with more than happy Chance, “To rayse the Man whom Fortune will aduance.’ St. 17, ed. folio. (Both stanzas are very different in the earlier eds.)” </p.209 >

Ed. note: The inverted commas of Q1 CLN 365-372, 377 in the passage related to Q2 and F1 suggests a written source.

524 character] Verplanck (ed. 1844): “See that you imprint, as in character.”

523-45 Hunter (1845, 2:219-20): <p. 219>“Polonius is the dull prosing politician of the time. There is probably much personal satire in the character. It was the practice of those politicians to deliver maxims to their children to be their guide in life. Thus Lord Burghley left ten admirable precepts of worldly prudence to his son Robert, afterwards Earl of Salisbury, which may be read in the Desiderata Curiosa; and in The Harleian Miscellany is a letter from Sir Henry Sydney to Philip his son, containing divers lessons of prudence delivered in didactic for,. So also the Earl of Northumberland in the paper to which we have already referred.

“That there was some individual nobleman more particularly pointed at in the character of Polonius I can entertain no doubt, nor that some attentive observer of the men of </p. 219><p. 220> those times will one day trace the Poet home. Could it be the Lord Chamberlain? Prynne alludes to the practice of bringing living noblemen upon the stage, and names particularly the Lord Admiral, the Lord Treasurer, and Count Gondomer, as persons with whom the stage had made free.” </p. 220>

523-45 Hudson (1848, 2:117-21) finds Polonius incapable of learning anything true about human nature from the maxims he has conned (2:117): “coming from Polonius, they seem but the extraction and quintescence of Chesterfieldism, of which the first and great commandment is, act and speak to conceal, not to express thy thoughts, and avoid to do any thing that may injure thyself. . . and if in this brief abstract of policy he sprinkles a few elements of manly honour and generosity, it is only to make the compound more palatable to a young mind. . . (2:119).

“The whole gist of his instructions to Laertes is, to study and discipline all spontaneousness out of himself;. . . . his morality and religion spring altogether from the understanding, not from the conscience nor the heart; and therefore are in reality and in effect but two chapters of political economy, one for this world, and one for the next” (2:121).

523 precepts] Eliot (1853-): “In the qto of 1603 it is [illeg.] that the precepts of Polonius—this good sense . . . of which . . . in general character . . . memory alone.”

Ed. note: ms. notes too faint to read completely but the remaining words suggest agreement with Warburton.

523-46 French (1869, pp. 301- 6, apud Furness, ed. 1877, 2: 238-40] tries to establish connections among the play’s characters and court figures of around 1600. Polonius he connects to the Lord High Treasurer, Sir William Cecil, Lord Burleigh; Laertes to Burleigh’s second son, Robert Cecil; and Ophelia to Anne Cecil. The father of the latter and the father of Sir Philip Sydney proposed marriage between their children, but she married (unhappily) Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford. Burleigh gave his son Robert ten precepts to follow, some of which match those of Polonius to Laertes.

523-37 And these fewe precepts . . . rich not gaudy] Rushton (1871, pp. 45-7): <p.45> “‘And to thee Philautus I begin to addresse my speach, hauing made an end of mine hermits tale, and if these few precepts I giue thee be obserued, then doubt not but we both shall learne that we best lyke. And these they are.

‘At thy comming into England be not too inquisitiue of newes, neither curious in matters of State, in assemblies aske no questions, either concerning manners or men. Be not lauish of thy tongue, either in causes of weight, least thou shew thy selfe an espyall, or in wanton talke, least thou proue thy selfe a foole.

‘It is the Nature of that country to sift straungers: euery one that shaketh thee by the hand, is not ioyned to thee in heart. They thinke Italians wanton, and Grecians subtill, they will trust neither they are so incredulous: but vndermine both, they are so wise. Be not quarrellous for euery lyght occasion: they are impatient in their anger of any equal, readie to reuenge an iniury, but neuer wont to profer any: they neuer fight without prouoking, and once prouoked they neuer cease. Beware thou fal not into ye snares of loue, ye women there are wise, the men craftie: they will gather loue by thy lookes, and picke thy minde out of thy hands. It shal be there better to heare what they say, then to speak what thou thinkest.’ </p.45>

<p.46> “This advice of Euphues to Philautus is probably the origin of the advice of Polonius to Laertes.

“I will place some parts of these passages close together, so that the reader will more easily see the resemblance between these few precepts of Euphues and Polonius. [Here Rushton sets out five corresponding precepts by matching items in Euphues with items in Ham., along with the following general observation] </p. 46><p. 47>

“The word beware is used by Lyly and Shakespeare in these passages. There is further resemblance to the advice of Polonius in other parts of Euphues, but I cannot now quote all of them.” </p.47>

523-45 Clark & Wright (ed. 1872): “Mr. Rushton, Shakespeare’s Euphuism, pp. 45, 46, has pointed out many striking resemblances between the precepts of Polonius and the advice of Euphues to Philautus.”

523-45 Furness (ed. 1877): “Dyce here cites many examples from early poetry of thus [i.e., with quotation marks] marking maxims; he might have descended to much later times. Warburton, in his edition of Sh. uniformly keeps the custom. Ed. . . . See also [1113] and French, in Appendix, p. 239.”

Ed. note: Furness misses the point of Warburton’s quotation marks: they do not mark maxims, particularly, but shining passages, in Pope’s mode. Some of these are maxims, of course, but not all.

523-45 White (ed. 1883): “This maxim [543-4], and all of those which Polonius impresses on Laertes, S. found in John Lyly’s Euphues.”

523-45 MacDonald (ed. 1885): “As many of Polonius’ aphorismic utterances as are given in the 1st Quarto have there inverted commas; but whether intended as gleanings from books or as fruits of experience, the light they throw on the character of him who speaks them is the same: they show it altogether selfish. He is a man of the world, wise in his generation, his principles the best of their bad sort. Of these his son is a fit recipient and retailer, passing on to his sister their father’s grand doctrine of self-protection. But, wise in maxim, Polonius is foolish in practice—not from senility, but from vanity.”

523 precepts] Dowden (ed. 1899): “Parallels for several of these precepts have been pointed out by Rushton [. . . ], and by Hunter in Lord Burghley’s ten precepts for his son Robert.”

523-45 Farjeon (1924, rpt. 1949, p. 141) faults the direction of the performance for such “unpardonable minor flaws, as the distraction of Laertes pulling on his gloves while Polonius delivered himself of his now platitudinous advice.”

523-45 Travers (ed. 1929), comparing the Countess of Roussillon’s advice to Polonius’s, says: “she speaks far more briefly . . . directly from the soul—while Polonius is, in comparison, ponderous, lengthy, earthy, with an occasional flourish of dubious value (‘as the night the day [544]. . . . Does not he, whether consciously or not, recite rather than speak?”

523-46 Kittredge (ed. 1939): "Polonius’s advice is sound and sensible—not more ’worldly wise’ than the occasion warrents; and it concludes with a precept which raises the whole speech to a high ethical standard."

Kittredge’s additional analogues: Hesiod Works and Days, 707-16; ’Rabbi Bilesie’s Farewell to his Son" in Green’s Mourning Garment (ed. Grosart, IX, 137-9); Greene, James IV, 4.1.249-66 (ed. Collins, II, 93-4), Greene, The Carde of Fancie (ed. Grosart, IV.21-3); Florio’s Second Fruites, 1591, Chap. vi, pp. 92-105; Massinger, A New Way to Pay Old Debts, 1.2.129ff. (ed. Gayley, Representative Comedies, III, 338).

523-45 Rossiter (1961, p. 183): “Denmark is a world where Polonius’s lecture to Laertes on the way to get on is the substitute for virtue. ‘Look after yourself,’ he says; and lays the same gospel of self-interest before Ophelia.”

523-46 Jenkins (ed. 1982, pp. 133-4) objects to Polonius’s advice being “turned into a joke on stage, ” with Laertes “bored and fidgety.” The advice “is not too long for its dramatic purpose of holding father and son together on the stage in their father-and-son relationship. The traditional nature of the maxims bestowed on a son being launched into the world shows Polonius in his generic paternal role.” Polonius and Laertes, then, are parallel to old King Hamlet and Hamlet and to Old Fortinbras and young Fortinbras.

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.”

523 these fewe precepts] Edwards (ed. 1985): "In the previous scene, the present scene, and the next, parents are busy advising and instructing children, and attempting to regulate their lives. The tables are turned in the second half of the play, when Hamlet admonishes his mother and the dutiful Laertes rebels against his king."

523-4, 543 Goldberg (1988, p. 314): “Polonius prepares Laertes for his departure in the terms that the Ghost uses two scenes later with Hamlet, the language of the copy-book. Here, too, the mind is imagined as a writing tablet, and Laertes’s character is generated as the locus of commonplaces, a repository for the moral saws that Polonius utters, culminating in ’This above all, to thine own self be true’ [543]. Laertes’s ’own self’ is the superficies of Polonius’s sententiae, and the interiority of the character might be no more than the depth of the incision of characters in stone or wax.”

523-4 these . . . character] Desmet (2006, pp. 48-9): <p. 48> “In Hamlet, Polonius expresses the sonnet speaker’s optimism concerning the vitality and permanence of memory’s writing when he advises his son: ’These few Precepts in thy memory See thou </p. 48> <p. 49> character . . . ” </p. 49> [see CN 784]

523-45 precepts . . . man] Condren (2006, p. 107): Polonius’s "advice to his son Laertes does little but specify the terms through which social movement was possible, a parody of Aristotelian definition by mean, most tellingly on the fixation with dress . . . . Curiously, almost the only substantial advice, ’neither a borrower nor a lender be,’ would have been hopelessly impractical in a cash-strapped society functioning through reciprocal debt."

523 these fewe precepts] Thompson & Taylor (ed. 2006): “Sometimes in performance Polonius reads the precepts from a paper which he gives to Laertes at the end of the speech. Perhaps surprisingly, Q2 does not mark [524-45] as ’sentences’ (see [499], [501], [502 CN]), though Q1 does. Dent points out that ’every idea in the speech is a commonplace’ (28) and that as many as 20 proverbs may be relevant (xxvi, n. 29); he cites such examples as ’Keep well they friends when thou hast gotten them’ (F752), ’Try (your friend) before you trust’ (T595), ’Give not your (right) hand to every man’ (H68), ’Hear much but speak little’ (M1277), ’A man should hear all parts ere he judge any’ (M299), ’Apparel makes the man’ (A283) and ’Who lends to a friend loses double’ (F725). Shakespeare stages a similar occasion in the opening scene of AWW when the Countess gives some parting advice to her son Bertram (1.1.60-9).”