#it's the quintessential hashtag-its-not-that-deep quote | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

galacticlamps · 10 months

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'to thine own self be true (and thou canst not then be false to any man)' Polonius tells his son Laertes in Act 1 - and it's so trite a saying that we quote it on everything from greeting cards to jewelry and almost laugh to stumble upon it in its original context

and then Laertes goes and spends the rest of the play - and let's face it, what little of it came before that as well - playing the foil to its tragic hero until it kills them both in Act 5 (and through the means of his own deception too)

#i am soooo normal about laertes (i'm lying)#one day i'll write a book about how normal i am about him but for now have this textpost #anyways nobody asked but i think that's probably the shakespeare quote i have the biggest love/hate relationship with #because we talk about it so much but hardly ever actually talk about IT #and even when we do it's mainly to be like 'oh polonius you with your empty maxims you!' (& we do need to remember that part too)#but it's also:#'oh polonius you are in conjunction with that & in more ways than one the very thing that dooms your son and therefore all of them'#it's the quintessential hashtag-its-not-that-deep quote #while at the same time being bitterly ironic and rarely do you get to discuss how both of those things can be true at once #so i Love it but i also Hate that i could undoubtedly find it on a t-shirt without much effort yk?#(and before anyone points out that there are multiple shakespeare quotes for which the same can be said re: the whole #itssodeep-noitsnot-actuallymaybeitisforadifferentreasontho dance #trust me i know but i refer you back to the first tag & how extremely normal i am about the character of laertes in general)

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