I refer to Daphne Caruana Galizia’s article “Know thyself-and only then, move on” (TMIS, 4 September). Your correspondent suggested that ‘middle-aged politicians’ should decorate their Facebook with the following quotation: “This above all: To thine own self be true, for it must follow as dost the night the day, that canst not then be false to any man.”

Admittedly, these poetic words repeated parrot-fashion for four centuries have become generally received and an often-quoted wisdom, used as a proverb, as if they were biblical or as if they are indeed Shakespeare’s own nuggets of wisdom for a ’philosophy of life’’.

This quotation sounds wise on the surface but is hollow and useless upon critical scrutiny and has always struck me as not being essentially true. In fact I find it obviously untrue. Who is the self to whom one is called upon to be true? How exactly does it ascertain against being ‘false to any man’? It is not sensible advice but a way to cynical egoism, self-centred arrogance, self-interest and self-advancement.

It is best to examine the context in which these most famous lines appear. They are Polonius’ final advice to his son Laertes before he leaves for Paris. Shakespeare put them into the mouth of a politician and not of a moralist. Polonius is a villain, a devious, mean-minded deceiver, a conspirator, a liar, a hypocrite, a man who is never true to himself, the epitome of a false self. Having uttered these words to Laertes, he is next seen scheming with Reynaldo, a spy he intends to set on his own son (2, i). By now we should realise that he is not himself true and, as we increasingly discover, he is false to every man. Polonius is killed because he was hiding behind a curtain, spying on Hamlet. He died because he did not listen to himself. ‘Do as I say, not as I do’ sums up his character perfectly. Hitler, Stalin, Mao and any despot you can name, were all true to themselves and false to many millions of other men. An adulterer is true to himself and false to his wife. A child abuser is true to himself and false to the victim.

There is no merit in being true ‘to thine own self’ if you are egoistic, wicked or corrupt. Irony is lost when Polonius’ maxims are cited as supreme wisdom. (Gary Saul Morson: The Words of Others, Yale U.P. 2011). Shakespeare, I am certain, wanted us to see through Polonius and to judge his advice accordingly. The American journalist Sydney J. Harris wrote that in Polonius’ speech that contains the famous lines, Shakespeare played his most ironic joke on the world, and remarked “that until more of us become as good as Hamlet the world will continue to be run by men as bad as Polonius”.

Alfred Fabri

ATTARD