Polonius is the Lord Chamberlain of Denmark in Shakespeare's Hamlet . He is the father of Ophelia and Laertes. In past productions (that is, before about 1980), Polonius was usually played as a well-meaning but doddering, senile old fool who cannot resist meddling, but more recent productions have not made him senile, and have tended to emphasize his deviousness and distrustfulness (in the complete version of Hamlet , after Laertes has gone to France, Polonius sends out his own servant to spy on him to make sure he is behaving honorably). He distrusts the motives of Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark, who is in love with Ophelia, and warns Ophelia to stay away from Hamlet. When she tells her father that Hamlet, who is pretending to be mad as a means of avenging his father's murder, has been behaving strangely, Polonius immediately concludes that this is because Ophelia has returned all of Hamlet's love letters. But, as distrustful as he is, Polonius is too stupid to realize that Hamlet is making fun of him when he (Polonius) tries to discover exactly how crazy Hamlet apparently is. He even uses Ophelia to set a trap for Hamlet to see if Hamlet has really gone insane mainly out of love for her, and persists in believing so even after Claudius, the usurping King of Denmark, realizes that something else besides rejected love is on Hamlet's mind. Polonius finally ends up being mistakenly killed by Hamlet after spying on him once too often.In Kenneth Branagh's 1996 four-hour film of Hamlet , Polonius is given a physically violent streak of cruelty that he definitely does not possess in other versions of the play, including Shakespeare's original. When utttering the line What is between you? Give me up the truth , he grabs Ophelia by the shoulders violently and shoves her into a corner, while speaking the line in a fierce tone of voice. This is the only time in Branagh's film that he becomes physically aggressive. On the other hand, he is quite tender and loving toward Ophelia when he discovers how frightened and upset she is over Hamlet's mad behavior, and seems sincerely repentant for misjudging Hamlet's intentions toward her.Hamlet himself is openly contemptuous toward Polonius and even pokes fun at him in front of others. Show less «