Brevity is the soul of wit.

In Act II, scene 2 of Hamlet, the King has just dismissed his ambassadors, back from Norway. Polonius, his elderly counsellor, is eager to reveal what he believes he has discovered: the cause of Prince Hamlet’s strange behaviour. He launches into a winding preamble on “What majesty should be, what duty is, Why day is day, night night, and time is time”, then invokes this maxim and promises to be brief. Soon, still circling his subject, he provokes the Queen: “More matter, with less art.”

The comedy lies in the gap between the maxim and the man. Polonius cannot resist his own wordplay (“a foolish figure”, he admits) before explaining that Hamlet is mad for love of Ophelia, his daughter. In Shakespeare’s English, “wit” meant intelligence and good sense rather than humour.

Hamlet was written around 1600 and first printed in 1603. Detached from its speaker, the line has become sincere advice to writers and speakers, and a common way of saying that jokes work best when short.

Hamlet, Act II, scene 2 (Polonius), 1600

Checked word for word in the work itself.

Read the passage in the work