Monday, May 20, 2013

Does Hamlet believe Polonius should use every person after their own desert in Hamlet by William Shakespeare?

The antithesis of a character such as Polonius, Hamlet
chides Polonius in Act II, Scene 2, for his characteristic remark.  For, when Hamlet, as
host to the players who have come to perform for the court of Denmark, asks Poloniusto
pay the players well so that all may go well with his
life,



Good my
lord, will you see the players well
bestow'd? Do you hear? Let them be well
used; for they
are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time. After

your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their(520)
ill
report while you
live.



Polonius foolishly
replies, "My lord, I will use them according to their desert."  For, he does not
understand as does Hamlet that the itinerant actors are the chroniclers of the
time. Hamlet tells Polonius that a bad epitaph on one's grave is preferable to all the
damage actors can do to one's reputation if they perform dramactic acts descriptive of
the courts which disparage the nobility in them.  Chiding Polonius, Hamlet recites his
own golden rule that everyone should be treated better than what they
deserve:


readability="11">

God's bodykin, man, much better: use
every
man after his desert, and who should 'scape
whipping? Use them
after your own honor
and dignity: the less they deserve, the
more
merit is in your bounty. Take them
in.



That is, Hamlet believes
that one should treat people better than they deserve, thus demonstrating one's own
honor. Such charity surely goes to one's credit, he contends.  Clearly, Hamlet
demonstrates his noble heart while the duplicitous Polonius unwittingly reveals his
own.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Can (sec x - cosec x) / (tan x - cot x) be simplified further?

Given the expression ( sec x - csec x ) / (tan x - cot x) We need to simplify. We will use trigonometric identities ...