One of the themes of Shakespeare's Hamlet corresponds with ideas expressed by Krishnamurti and Vincent Ryan Ruggiero regarding becoming an individual and at the same time finding accord with one's society. In Hamlet, Shakespeare may indicate a positive truth through the revelation of negatives such as in his depiction of Polonius. Polonius is indeed a pompous man whose aphorisms repeat endlessly a view of personal integrity that is at odds with the Christian conception and that indeed belittles the individual-centered conception of integrity by comparison. Roland Mushat Frye notes that two basic kinds of integrity are both found in Shakespeare's characters, but the first--the integrity of the natural man within the natural order--is seen as a pagan conception most naturally expressed in the Roman plays. Brutus refers to his personal integrity when he states:
There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats;
For I am arm'd so strong in honesty,
That they pass me by as the idle wind,
Which I respect not (IV.iii.66-69).
Polonius is a character from the eleventh century who represents a form of the pagan view within a Christian context. He expresses his view of integrity as a matter of personal effort when he states:
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 (I.iii.78-80).
This self-assurance is not itself un-Christian, but Christian doctrine would hold that "the fault with such integrity as Polonius recommends is that it places man's reliance entirely upon himself, without reference to God" (Frye 189). Polonius tells his son only to look within himself for answers, an integrity in keeping with Aristotle and the Greeks and not with the Christian conception of integrity derived as a gift from God. Polonius expresses his views in particularly trite and pompous terms, and he might not recognize the fact that his conc...