/lit/ - Literature

He says it after he is killed, he is talking about what just happened. being killed

>>7763754
With his dying breath he confessed to living a double life. His second identity was the enigmatic Slain, master thief and revolutionary. The subplot was only in the original version of the play.

He's banging a bich

Liken"oi uv jus slain this hoe right here bruv"

>>7763754
The s is silent

"O, I am 'Lain,
O, we are Lain
I do not need my body anymore
Lain is love,
Lain is life"

>>7763811

It's just how they said "my sides" back then. He was just told a funny joke.

>>7763754
Non-meme answer: Polonius' character was a parody of Euphuism, which was an extremely bombastic and over-the-top style of poetry and (mostly) prose in the late 16th / early 17th century. If you want a good example, check out John Lyly's (A.K.A, Euphues) Anatomy of Wyt for a good example. Here's a passage selected at random:

>One droppe of poyson infecteth the whole tunne of Wine : one leafe of Colloquintida marreth and spoyleththe whole pot of porredge: one yron Mole, defaceth the whole peece of Lawne. Descend into thine owne conscience,and consider with thy selfe, the great difference betweene staring and starke blynde, witte and wisedome, loue and lust : be merry, but with modeslie : be sober, but not too sullen : be valyaunt, but not too venterous.

Lyly continues on for some insufferable period of time with this endless string of (largely redundant) aphorisms.
Similarly, Polonius' series of monologues all throughout Acts I & II mirror this style:

>The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
>Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
>But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
>Of each new-hatched, unfleg'd comrade. Beware
>Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in,
>Bear't, that th'opposed may beware of thee.
>Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice:
>Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgement.
>Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
>But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy:
>For the apparel oft proclaims the man;
>And they in France of the best rank and station
>Are most select and generous, chief in that.

(Act I, Scene III)

Keep in mind that Polonius' character is not a complete mockery, and actual straight-laced uses of the form were thrown out there by the bard in A Midsummer Night's Dream, but it's important to note that Polonius IS at some level a joke. Note his rigid meter, even more obvious compared to Ophelia's lines from the same scene:

>I shall th'effect of this good lesson keep,
>As watchman to my heart. But good my brother,
>Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
>Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
>Whilst, like a puff'd and reckless libertine,
>Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
>And recks not his own rede.

Ophelia's pentameter (often not even recognizable as such) can be mistaken for natural speech, while Polonius has the cadence of a nursury rhyme. You can see this with other poets. Any sufficiently skilled English poet, from Chaucer to Ashbery, will be generally more free with their rhyme and meter the more serious they get (see Plath's collection Ariel, the still heavy but less morbid "Cut" is actually metered, and rhymes on a few occasions:

>A million soldiers run,
>Redcoats, every one.

>Whose side are they on?
>O my
>Homunculus, I am ill.
>I have taken a pill to kill

(cont...)

>>7764053
If read properly, this can even elicit a laugh. But the more serious and dark "Daddy" barely rhymes at all, and its flow is far closer in affect to natural speech.
So back to Shakespeare, and you can see that Polonius is actually an incredibly comic character, what with his weird, hiding-behind-curtains behaviour and silly attitude. He's not comic in the Shakespearian sense, but in the modern sense. (Most of Shakespeare's tragedies reached for a laugh or two at some point, while most of Shakespeare's comedies were terribly unfunny -- only /pol/ could actually laugh at The Merchant of Venice.) Actually, the entirety of the play is absolutely hilarious. Read Hamlet's Act III "To be or not to be" monologue properly, with Ophelia in the room and Hamlet as a sarcastic, whiny bitch, and the scene becomes a knee-slapper; or take the sexual wordplay in the scene following that between Hamlet and Ophelia: if you don't laugh, you're either not reading it right, or it's a poor performance.
So, Hamlet is a (black) comedy, in the modern sense of the word. Most of the play up until Act V (where Shakespeare would've been disappointed if Yorrick couldn't make you cry,) could have a laugh-track thrown over it and you wouldn't tell the difference, and in this play of fundamentally funny characters, Polonius is the funniest ( with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern also playing comic relief.) This is why a good Polonius performance is irreverent and over the top.
When Polonius outright announces his own death as though he were the fucking town crier, and in such a bizarre way, most critics who take the line as Shakespeare jerking himself off have not been paying attention to the character, because that's EXACTLY what Polonius would do.

By the way, here's a link to Anatomy of Wyt so you can get a sense of Lyly's style. Be forewarned, parts can be difficult to swallow.

https://archive.org/details/cu31924013122084

>>7763811
I think this should be called "A Poem Without Fs".

>>7764060
Quick thing I should have pointed out earlier, the portion of Euphues I quoted appears on Page 142, albeit with spelling corrected for modern audiences (yeah, it sucks, but so does Lyly).

>>7764053
>>7764060
>>7764082

Thank you for the quality post anon!

>>7764053
>>7764060
>actual quality posts on /lit/
Truly the end of days is nigh

>>7764053
>>7764060
Bane?

>>7763754
>What did he mean by this?
What did )you( mean by this?