<P> In most productions of the 20th century, up to about 1980, Polonius was played as a somewhat senile, garrulous man of about seventy - five or so, eliciting a few laughs from the audience by the depiction . More recent productions have tended to play him as a slightly younger man, and to emphasise his shiftiness rather than pompous senility, harking back to the traditional manner in which Polonius was played before the 20th century . Until the 1900s there was a tradition that the actor who plays Polonius also plays the quick - witted gravedigger in Act V . This bit suggests that the actor who played Polonius was an actor used to playing clowns much like the Fool in King Lear: not a doddering old fool, but an alive and intelligent master of illusion and misdirection . Polonius adds a new dimension to the play and is a controlling and menacing character . </P> <P> One key to the portrayal is a producer's decision to keep or remove the brief scene with his servant, Reynaldo, which comes after his scene of genial, fatherly advice to Laertes . He instructs Reynaldo to spy on his son, and even suggest that he has been gambling and consorting with prostitutes, to find out what he has really been up to . The inclusion of this scene portrays him in a much more sinister light; most productions, including Laurence Olivier's famous 1948 film version, choose to remove it . The respective productions starring Richard Burton and Kenneth Branagh both include it . Although Hume Cronyn plays Polonius mostly for laughs in the Burton production, Polonius is more sinister than comic in Branagh's version . </P> <P> Polonius's most famous lines are found in Act 1 Scene 3 ("Neither a borrower nor a lender be"; "To thine own self be true") and Act 2 Scene 2 ("Brevity is the soul of wit"; and "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't") while others have become paraphrased aphorisms ("Clothes make the man"; "Old friends are the best friends"). Also, the line he speaks when he is killed by Hamlet in Act 3 scene 4 ("O, I am slain!") has been subject to much parody and ridicule due to its relative obviousness . </P> <Ul> <Li> Hume Cronyn won a Tony Award for playing Polonius opposite Richard Burton's Hamlet in John Gielgud's 1964 Broadway production . No other actor has ever won an award for playing Polonius in any professional American stage version of Hamlet, nor for playing him in a film version of the play . </Li> <Li> In "The Producer", an 1966 episode of Gilligan's Island, Polonius' "Neither a borrower nor a lender be" speech is performed satirically, first by series regular Alan Hale Jr. as The Skipper playing the role of Polonius (with Dawn Wells as Mary Ann playing Laertes) in a musical production of Hamlet by the castaways, then by Phil Silvers guest - starring as a famous stage producer who finds himself on the island . </Li> <Li> Actors who have played Polonius on film and television include Hans Junkermann, Ian Holm, Michael Redgrave, Ian Richardson, Oliver Ford Davies, Bill Murray, and Richard Briers . </Li> </Ul>

Who said neither a borrower or a lender be