This above all: to thine own self be true, and…

In Act I, scene 3 of Hamlet, Laertes is about to sail for France. He has just warned his sister Ophelia against Hamlet’s love, and she has told him not to preach “the steep and thorny way to heaven” while treading “the primrose path of dalliance” himself. Their father Polonius arrives, urges him aboard, “for shame!”, then delays him with a string of precepts: keep your thoughts to yourself, hold your friends “with hoops of steel”, listen to all but speak to few, dress richly but not gaudily, “Neither a borrower, nor a lender be”.

The line crowns the list: as night follows day, being true to oneself makes it impossible to be false to others. Coming from Polonius, a scheming courtier, the advice may be more worldly than it sounds. In the next act, he sends a servant to Paris to spy on his son.

Hamlet was written around 1600. Today the precept is read as a call to authenticity and integrity, far from the comic old man who first spoke it.

Hamlet, Act I, scene 3 (Polonius), 1600

Checked word for word in the work itself.

Read the passage in the work