"My lord, he's going to his mother's closet. Behind the arras I'll convey myself to hear the process. Fare you well, liege. I'll call upon you ere you go to bed and tell you what I know." "Thanks, my dear lord." As he left, Polonius paused in the doorway. He watched King Claudius for a moment. The King stood in the center of the chamber, staring into nothingness. It occurred to Polonius that the King had not properly heard a word he had just said, just as he had not said a word to him before the play. Polonius may have famously been a talker, but he too could listen.
He thought about his daughter, beautiful, kind, loving. He thought about the tears which stood in her eyes that afternoon he had sent her as nothing better than bait for Prince Hamlet. Woe is me to have seen what I have seen. Polonius may have been a Lord, but he was also a father.
He made his way down the drafty corridors of Elsinore on his way to the Queen's apartments. The frigid air in conjunction with the conclusion of a very tiring day moved him to thought as the collision of flint and steel moves to a spark. He remembered, nearly four months ago, the day upon which he was appointed Lord Chamberlain. For all of his adult life, he had been at the royal court under the late King Hamlet, and he had done fairly well for himself. But King Hamlet had had a very worthy Lord of his own, father to Horatio, who abruptly left the castle following the king's death, leaving even his son behind. Claudius had told him, "Your devotion to the crown and accomplishments in its name do move me as a summer wind may move the leaves of trees. I maintain hope that you may undertake this position in these present dark and treacherous times, for a home is nothing without its cornerstone, and a group is nothing with its center. My noble brother's death is behind us; the future of Elsinore is bright." It had struck him the way Claudius had simply disregarded the death of King Hamlet, and it wasn't as if the thought had never crossed his mind that perhaps the story of a serpent stinging the King had been more of a parable than it was a literal account-nay, perhaps it was even a lie.
Polonius stood still outside the doorway to the Queen's room. Such thought was treason, as well as supreme disloyalty to a man who had made him what he was. But this same man had plunged the Prince into madness and his daughter into depression.
Polonius opened the door to the Queen's chambers and spoke to the noble woman, seating in an armchair near to the door. His voice was weary, but perhaps this was a quality shared by many at Elsinore in recent weeks. "Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with, and that your Grace hath screened and stood between much heat and him." He stepped towards the arras behind her chair. "I'll shroud me even here. Pray you, be round with him." The Queen nodded grimly, and he moved the fabric so that he could stand behind it.
As the fabric cloaked his field of vision, he heard the Prince open the door.
It was at this moment Polonius had a final burst of thought.
He may have been a fool, but he was also a man.