provides
a much-needed sense of stability in the play. He represents certainty in an uncertain world.
Thanks largely to ' murder of old King , and 's increasingly strange behavior, the Danish court
has been plunged into turmoil. This is the very last thing the country needs withand the army of
Norway threatening to invade at any moment. So it's important to have someone on hand like
Polonius to remind everyone, however irritatingly, of their duties and
responsibilities.
The problem, however, is that Polonius himself is caught up
in the complicated web of court intrigue. Although he likes to think of himself as the very font
of wisdom and good sense, in actual fact he's storing up considerable trouble for himself by
getting himself deeply embroiled in the various shenanigans going on at Elsinore. Polonius is so
full of self-regard, so utterly convinced of his own cleverness, that he fails to notice that
the situation at court is nowhere near as straightforward as he'd like to believe. Polonius'
miscalculation proves to be a fatal one as he ends up dying at the point of Hamlet's
sword.
One could argue that with the death of Polonius all the old values die
with him. From now on, life at court will only become ever more chaotic, with no one quite sure
of what's going on. Pompous, two-faced bore though he may have been, but Polonius nonetheless
acted as a reminder of the importance of duty and decorum. But once he's out of the way there's
no one left who's prepared to step into the breach and act as a responsible figure of authority
ought to. That onerous responsibility will fall upon the shoulders of Fortinbras, whose arrival
at the play's end heralds the reimposition of rules, order, and stability upon this fractious
kingdom.
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