Quote Analysis

Polonius concludes his advice to Laertes with what he presents as the most important principle: be true to yourself, and you will naturally be honest with others.

The simile 'as the night the day' makes Polonius's logic sound natural and inevitable, like a law of the universe—but the confidence is ironic, since this is the same man who will spend the rest of the play spying, scheming, and performing false selves. The phrase 'to thine own self be true' sounds noble in isolation, but coming from Polonius—whose 'self' is a meddling, self-important courtier—it exposes the emptiness of the maxim: what if your true self is false?

Use this to argue that Shakespeare uses dramatic irony to undermine Polonius's wisdom—the audience knows he doesn't follow his own advice, which makes this famous line less a moral truth and more a portrait of self-deception, showing how easily aphorisms can substitute for actual integrity.