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

Hamlet The Wisdom of Polonius The disadvantage of the unimaginative mans realism is that it breaks down, and refuses to work, and then he finds out, at the cost of enormous mourning and suffering, that he has been working on a surmisal all the date, only if a wrong theory and he wishes he had done a little more thought process before it was too late. Gradually it is seemly plain to a world which has always scoffed at the philosophers that a conjunction run on the lines of Polonius, every man being true to himself or to his own class, will non in the long run work, entirely will infallibly explode, with hideous give way and combustion, into chaos, and make way for a society which shall be less selfish. In the play, Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, Polonius proclaims To thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the dark the day, Thou go offst not then be false to any man. This is often cited as a fine example of the noble wisdom of our high-flown bard, and so fo rth whereas any one who looks carefully at these lines can see that if our sublime bard had nothing wiser than this to say about the conduce of life, the less we talk about his wisdom the better. As a takings 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 disused gentleman who spends most of his time talking nonsense. Hamlet himself - who obviously comes nearer than anybody else to speaking Shakespeares own estimation - 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 do up partly of bits of cheap and shallow 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 dis advantage of the practical mans world is that 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.