Hamlet: The Wisdom of Polonius Essay -- GCSE Coursework Shakespeare Ha

Hamlet The Wisdom of Polonius The disadvantage of the practical mans world is that it breaks down, and refuses to work, and then he finds out, at the constitute of wondrous distress and suffering, that he has been working on a theory all the time, but a wrong theory and he wishes he had do a little more thinking before it was too late. Gradually it is becoming plain to a world which has always scoffed at the philosophers that a gild ferment on the lines of Polonius, every man being true to himself or to his own class, lead not in the long run work, but will infallibly explode, with dreadful ruin and combustion, into chaos, and make way for a society which shall be slight selfish. In the play, Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, Polonius proclaims To thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. This is often cited as a fine example of the noble wisdom of our deluxe bard, and so forth whereas any one who looks careful ly at these lines can see that if our sublime bard had nothing wiser than this to say about the conduct of life, the less we talk about his wisdom the better. As a matter of fact, of course, the lines are nonsense, and Shakespeare was well aware that they are nonsense he puts them in the mouth of a garrulous experienced gentleman who spends most of his time talking nonsense. Hamlet himself - who obviously comes nearer than anybody else to speaking Shakespeares own mind - calls Polonius a tedious old fool, and it is plain that a tedious old fool is exactly what Shakespeare is trying to portray. The rest of the speech, of which these famous lines are the conclusion, is made up partly of bits of cheap and change worldly... ...kind. To do that is to be a philosopher. There are not many philosophersand the practical man is not sorry there are so few, for he is proud of belonging, as he says, to a world of practice, not of mere theory. The disadvantage of the practical mans world is t hat it breaks down, and refuses to work, and then he finds out, at the cost of enormous distress and suffering, that he has been working on a theory all the time, but a wrong theory and he wishes he had done a little more thinking before it was too late. Gradually it is becoming plain to a world which has always scoffed at the philosophers that a society run on the lines of Polonius, every man being true to himself or to his own class, will not in the long run work, but will infallibly explode, with hideous ruin and combustion, into chaos, and make way for a society which shall be less selfish.