Hamlet's Wise Polonius In Shakespeare's play Hamlet there is a character, besides the protagonist, who is very quotable because of the wisdom of his comments. This is the father of Laertes and Ophelia, that is, Polonius. He is the subject of this essay. In “Shakespeare Nomenclature” Harry Levin discusses the name “Polonius” and other names in the play: The Latinism Polonius reminds us of the Polish question, controversial throughout Hamlet, where the name days are polyglot. If Marcello and Claudio are Latin, Bernardo and Orazio are Italian, and Fortebraccio means "strong arm" not in Norwegian but in French (fort-en-bras). On the other hand, Polonius' son has a Greek godfather in Laertes, Odysseus' father. Scandinavian names, at least the Germanic Gertrude, stand out because they are in the minority. (79)What's in a name like Polonius? Here is a literary critic who respects his advice: Rebecca West in “A Court and a World Infected with the Disease of Corruption” talks about Polonius: Polonius is interesting because he was a sly old schemer who, like an iceberg, showed only an eighth of himself itself above the surface. The innocuous kind of worldly wisdom that rolled off his tongue into balls of butter was a very small part of what he knew. It has not been sufficiently noted that Shakespeare would never have paused the action for Polonius to give advice to his son on how to behave abroad, unless the scene helped him develop his theme. But “this above all: be true to yourself; And it follows, as night does day, that you will not be able to be false to anyone” (I.3.78), has a considerable . . . value when uttered by an old gentleman who will soon assign a servant to spy on his son and declare great concern for his daughter's morals, when he clearly needed to send her to the country if he really wanted her to do so. keep any [. . .].(108)Polonius's entry into the work occurs during the social meeting of the royal court. Claudius has already been crowned; Queen Gertrude is there; Hamlet is present in the black robes of mourning. When Laertes approaches Claudius to say goodbye before returning to school, the king asks Polonius: “Do you have your father's permission? What does Polonius say?” And the father dutifully responds: