Assets off
for France,peppers him with advice. This includes worldly advice fit for a courtier's son: dress
as well (expensively) as you can, but in good, subdued taste; listen more than you talk; keep
your opinions to yourself; be friendly but not too friendly. All of this has to do with the
image you project and how you project and protect yourself. Polonius wants his son to be careful
about the external face he shows to people.
Other, more heartfelt advice
includes not borrowing or lending money and holding the true and tested friends you have made
very close, or, as Polonius puts it:
Those friends thou
hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel
The image of attaching a close friend to one's soul with hoops of
steel shows the importance of a true friend. Polonius also ends his advice with heartfelt words
that address issues deeper than mere surface appearance:
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.
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