Generally regarded as wrong in every judgment he makes over the course of the play,[1] Polonius is described by William Hazlitt as a "sincere" father, but also "a busy-body, [who] is accordingly officious, garrulous, and impertinent".

[citation needed] Throughout the play, Polonius is characterised as a typical Renaissance "new man", who pays much attention to appearances and ceremonious behaviour.

In Act 1, Scene 3, Polonius gives advice to his son Laertes, who is leaving for France, in the form of a list of sententious maxims.

However, in Act 2, Scene 1, he orders his servant Reynaldo to travel to Paris and spy on Laertes and report if he is indulging in any local vice.

Polonius echoes the request for help and is heard by Hamlet, who then mistakes the voice for Claudius' and stabs through the arras and kills him.

The literary origins of the character may be traced to the King's counsellor found in the Belleforest and William Painter versions of the Hamlet legend.

Arden Hamlet editor Harold Jenkins, for example, criticised the idea of any direct personal satire of Burghley as "unlikely" and "uncharacteristic of Shakespeare".

[7] Gollancz proposed that the source for the character's name and sententious platitudes was De optimo senatore, a book on statesmanship by the Polish courtier Wawrzyniec Grzymała Goślicki (known in Latin as Laurentius Grimaldius Goslicius), which was widely read after it was translated into English and published in 1598 under the title The Counsellor.

In most productions of the 20th century, up to about 1980, Polonius was played as a somewhat senile, garrulous man of about 75 or so, eliciting a few laughs from the audience by the depiction.

The inclusion of this scene portrays him in a much more sinister light; most productions, including Laurence Olivier's 1948 film version, choose to remove it.