To those who follow my blog, I have recently completed my first formal draft of one of three blog editions that I’ve written based on the testimony I have recently received from Saudi Arabian women on their lives. That blog is currently under review by a Saudi Arabian acquaintance of mine, and as soon as I receive her feedback, I plan to perform my final edits and post.
In the meantime, I have to ask how many young men ever received better parting advice from their father than Polonius’s to Laertes before his trip to France?
POLONIUS TO LAERTES IN HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK : Yet here, Laertes? Aboard, aboard, for shame! The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail, And you are stayed for. There— my blessing with thee! And these few precepts in thy memory Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportioned thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel, But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatched, unfledged courage. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in, Bear’t that th’opposèd may beware of thee. Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice; Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy, For the apparel oft proclaims the man, And they in France of the best rank and station are of a most select and generous chief in that. Neither a borrower nor a lender be, For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulleth edge of husbandry. 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. Farewell. My blessing season this in thee!
Reference: William Shakespeare (2009-08-26). Four Tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth (Bantam Classics) (Kindle Locations 1416-1436). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
FALSTAFF'S BRIEFS 