Elder Delbert L. Stapley, Part Four: Shakespeare's Truth from a Villain

For Part One, Part Two, Part Three, or Part Five in this series, pick a link and go for it. 

We're on to the next of five very generous quotes from Elder Delbert L. Stapley's talk, "Honesty and Integrity", and we have another quote from the ever-popular Bard today, the second from this conference: 

 

The Quote 

"Shakespeare said it so well: “This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” (Hamlet, act 1, sc. 3.)"

 

Before this quote, Elder Stapley gives a number of examples of people who are skirting the truth - giving back change when we're given more than we should have gotten, employers being honest with their employees, employees giving a full day's work for their employ, cheating customers or employers, teachers being honest in their grades - ways that people are not true to themselves. 

Do we honestly believe and live according to our beliefs, or do we keep a double standard?

I bring this up, because the quote he gives comes from a character in Hamlet that perfectly personifies this double standard.

The character, Polonius, is an advocate and advisor to the king of Denmark, who himself is a villain - he has killed his own brother and married his brother's wife, an power play that in those times would be akin to murder and adultery today.

Polonius gives the quote mentioned above at the end of a long speech to his loving son, who is headed to school and impatient to get away. The advice is given as a duty a father owes to his son. Not only is the advice insincere and not lived in the character's own life, but it falls upon deaf ears when given to his son.

Good advice, yes, but it comes from one who is an expert politician and manipulator, who lays a trap for Prince Hamlet and dies doing so.

I could go on for pages and pages about the character, and the play, but the point I want to make here is that it's interesting that truth can be spoken by someone, yet not lived out in the life of that same person. What self was Polonius being true to? 

What self are we being true to?

Aren't we all the same in some ways? I give great advice to my children when they ask for it (and sometimes when they don't ask for it), but what sort of example do I give to them? How do I live this advice?

If I'm being honest, I don't always. Jesus Christ was the only person who ever lived on the earth who left a perfect example of living to follow. I'm not Jesus. Not even close.

And yet, the statement is there, upon his lips. Polonius knows truth - he speaks it to his son. But he does not live it, and he comes to an ignominious end. I recognize this same tendency, and I fight this same tendency, in myself.

It's infinitely better to do, than to say. Saying is a start, but doing the good we say is what eventually separates hero from villain.

Shakespeare is awesome. Just sayin'. :-)