What is the title of the poem to thine own self be true?

Answer 1

Technically, it is not a poem; it is a soliloquy from Hamlet (one of several).

Yet here, Laertes! Aboard, aboard for shame!

The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,

And you are stay'd for.

There ... my blessing with thee!

And these few precepts in thy memory

Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,

Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.

Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.

Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,

Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;

But do not dull thy palm with entertainment

Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Beware

Of entrance to a quarrel but, being in,

Bear't that th' opposed may beware of thee.

Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;

Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgement.

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

But not express'd 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 dulls the 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!

Answer 2

Shakespeare wrote these words to be spoken by the devious windbag Polonius in the play Hamlet, who is imparting advice to his son Laertes. Like all lines written for plays, they cannot be fully understood out of the context of the play.

The surface meaning of the phrase should be clear if you can read English. If you are having trouble, you need to know, first, that the word "thine" is a form of the word "thy" when that word comes just before a word starting with a vowel (such as "own"), and that "thy" means the same as "your" if you are talking to one person. There are implications in the two words which we need not dwell on here. Suffice it to say that "thine own self" means about the same as "your own self".

You also need to know that it is possible to change the word order in English without changing the meaning. In particular, you can put the verb after a prepositional phrase, for example by saying "Hi-ho, it's off to work I go" instead of "Hi-ho, I go off to work". This is done to change emphasis or to improve rhythm. So, if we move "be true" to its more usual place we get "be true to thine (your) own self", which is self-explanatory.

What is not self-explanatory is the deeper meaning of this. It could mean a number of things, such as "be yourself", "don't deceive yourself", "look out for number one", or "be selfish". It is hard to know exactly what Polonius is getting at--whether he understands the meaning of what he says, and if so, whether he really means it, or whether he just thinks it sounds like a good thing to say.

Answer 3

This phrase is said by the character Polonius in Shakespeare's play Hamlet as a part of a long and rather boring speech in which he is advising his son Laertes on how to behave when Laertes goes to France. It is ironic since Polonius is a total fake himself.

Answer 4

"Know thyself" is an ancient aphorism of uncertain authorship. "To thine own self be true is said by the fictional character Polonius in the play Hamlet, by William Shakespeare.

Answer 5

It is in the play Hamlet and is spoken by the character Polonius.

Answer 6

Hamlet