Polonius

A stained glass representation of Polonius

Polonius is a character in William Shakespeare's Hamlet. He is King Claudius's chief counsellor, and the father of Ophelia and Laertes. Polonius connives with Claudius to spy on Hamlet. Hamlet eventually kills Polonius, provoking Ophelia's fit of madness and death and the climax of the play: a duel between Laertes and Hamlet.

Generally regarded as wrong in every judgement he makes over the course of the play, Polonius is described by William Hazlitt as a "sincere" father, but also "a busy-body, [who] is accordingly officious, garrulous, and impertinent." In Act II Hamlet refers to Polonius as a "tedious old fool" and taunts him as a latter day "Jeptha".

In the first quarto of Hamlet, Polonius is named "Corambis". It has been suggested that this derives "crambe" or "crambo", derived from a Latin phrase meaning "reheated cabbage", implying "a boring old man" who spouts trite rehashed ideas.

Character

Father of Ophelia and Laertes, and Lord Chamberlain to King Claudius, he is described as a windbag by some and a rambler of wisdom by others. It has also been suggested that he only acts like a "foolish prating knave" in order to keep his position and popularity safe and to keep anyone from discovering his plots for social advancement. It is important to note that throughout the play, Polonius is characterized as a typical Renaissance "new man", who pays much attention to appearances and ceremonious behaviour. Some adaptations show him conspiring with Claudius in the murder of King Hamlet.

In Act 1, Scene 3, Polonius gives advice to his son Laertes, who is leaving for France, in the form of a list of sententious maxims. He finishes by giving his son his blessing, and is apparently at ease with his son's departure. However, in Act 2, Scene 1, he orders his servant Reynaldo to travel to Paris and spy on Laertes and report if he is indulging in any local vice.

Laertes is not the only character Polonius spies upon. He is fearful that Hamlet's relationship with his daughter will hurt his reputation with the king and instructs Ophelia to "lock herself from [Hamlet's] resort." He later suspects that Ophelia's rejection of Hamlet's attention has caused the prince to lose his wits, and informs Gertrude and Claudius of his suspicion, claiming that his reason for commanding Ophelia to reject Hamlet was that the prince was above her station. He and the king test his theory by spying on and interrogating Ophelia.

In his last attempt to spy on Hamlet, Polonius hides himself behind an arras in Gertrude's room. Hamlet deals roughly with his mother, causing her to cry for help. Polonius echoes the request for help and is heard by Hamlet, who then mistakes the voice for Claudius' and stabs through the arras and kills him.

Polonius' death at the hands of Hamlet causes Claudius to fear for his own life, Ophelia to go mad, and Laertes to seek revenge, which leads to the duel in the final act.

Sources

The literary origins of the character may be traced to the King's counselor found in the Belleforest and William Painter versions of the Hamlet legend. However, at least since the 19th century scholars have also sought to understand the character in terms of Elizabethan court politics.

Polonius was first proposed as a parody of Queen Elizabeth's leading counsellor, Lord Treasurer, and Principal Secretary William Cecil, Lord Burghley in 1869. Israel Gollancz also suggested that Polonius might have been a satire on Burghley. The theory was often finessed with supplementary arguments, but also disputed. Arden Hamlet editor Harold Jenkins, for example, criticised the idea of any direct personal satire of Burghley as "unlikely" and "uncharacteristic of Shakespeare".

Gollancz also proposed that the source for the character's name and sententious platitudes was De optimo senatore, a book on statesmanship by the Polish courtier Wawrzyniec Grzymała Goślicki, which was widely read after it was translated into English and published in 1598 under the title "The Counsellor". "Polonius" is Latin for "Polish". The English translation of the book refers to its author as a statesman of the "polonian empyre".

Stage and film portrayals

In most productions of the 20th century, up to about 1980, Polonius was played as a somewhat senile, garrulous man of about seventy-five or so, eliciting a few laughs from the audience by the depiction. More recent productions have tended to play him as a slightly younger man, and to emphasise his shiftiness rather than pompous senility, harking back to the traditional manner in which Polonius was played before the 20th century. Until the 1900s there was a tradition that the actor who plays Polonius also plays the quick-witted gravedigger in Act V. This bit suggests that the actor who played Polonius was an actor used to playing clowns much like the Fool in King Lear: not a doddering old fool, but an alive and intelligent master of illusion and misdirection. Polonius adds a new dimension to the play and is a controlling and menacing character.

One key to the portrayal is a producer's decision to keep or remove the brief scene with his servant, Reynaldo, which comes after his scene of genial, fatherly advice to Laertes. He instructs Reynaldo to spy on his son, and even suggest that he has been gambling and consorting with prostitutes, in order to find out what he has really been up to. The inclusion of this scene portrays him in a much more sinister light; most productions, including Laurence Olivier's famous 1948 film version, choose to remove it. The respective productions starring Richard Burton and Kenneth Branagh both include it. Although Hume Cronyn plays Polonius mostly for laughs in the Burton production, Polonius is more sinister than comic in Branagh's version. The recent 2008 version of the play from the Australian company Bell Shakespeare portrays him as a rambling fool. Conversely, in the September 2010 production by Theater In The Pines at the Shalin Liu Performance Center in Rockport, MA; Polonius was played for laughs, but he also maintained a keen edge as a diabolical conspirator.

Famous lines

Polonius's most famous lines are found in Act 1, Scene 3, when he gives advice to his son Laertes in the form of sententious maxims: "To thine own self be true," as well as other phrases still in use today, such as "Neither a borrower nor a lender be" and enduring paraphrased aphorisms as: “Clothes make the man”; and “Old friends are the best friends.” Among his famous lines are also the lines: "Brevity is the soul of wit"; and "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't." found in Act 2, Scene 2.

• See all of Polonius's lines.

Notable Portrayals

• Hume Cronyn won a Tony Award for playing Polonius opposite Richard Burton's Hamlet in John Gielgud's 1964 Broadway production. No other actor has ever won an award for playing Polonius in any professional American stage version of Hamlet, nor for playing him in a film version of the play.
• In an episode of Gilligan's Island broadcast 3 October 1966, Phil Silvers performed a memorable send-up of Polonius' "Neither a borrower nor a lender be" speech in the role of a producer who appears on the island and stages a musical version of Hamlet with the castaways.
• Actors who have played Polonius on film and television include Bill Murray, Ian Holm, Ronan Coffey, Michael Redgrave, Oliver Ford Davies and Richard Briers.