Neither a borrower nor a lender be; for loan oft…

In Act I, scene 3 of Hamlet, Laertes is about to sail back to France. His father Polonius gives him his blessing and “these few precepts”: keep your thoughts to yourself, hold tried friends “with hoops of steel”, “Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice”, dress richly but not gaudily, “For the apparel oft proclaims the man”. Then comes the line, which continues: “And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry”, that is, of thrift. The last precept is the most famous: “This above all: to thine own self be true.” Laertes takes his leave, and Polonius turns to Ophelia to forbid her to see the prince.

The speech is a string of commonplaces from the conduct books of the age, and Shakespeare makes them both sensible and slightly comic in the mouth of a garrulous old counsellor. Hamlet was written around 1600.

Detached from the play, the advice on lending is quoted as plain financial wisdom, and is sometimes mistaken for a verse of the Bible.

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

Checked word for word in the work itself.

Read the passage in the work