“This above all, to thine own self be true” (Act I scene 3 line 78) as expressed in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is a philosophical idea that strips away moral standards, accountability, and that selflessness is evidence of true love, as taught by Professor Sir Walter Murdoch writes in The Policy of Polonius, “As a matter of fact, of course, the lines are nonsense, and Shakespeare was well aware that they are nonsense; he puts them in the mouth of a garrulous old gentleman who spends most of his time talking nonsense” *http://home.pacific.net.au/~morrisqc/Murdoch/Polonius.htm*. The characters of Hamlet and Laertes live by this faulty philosophy and form defective character traits that ultimately lead them to death. The same can be said for Alfred in O’Neill’s Before Breakfast, he follows a different path using the same philosophical ideals and ultimately ends up serving the same self centered desire. The assertion that somehow this philosophy can become stable with a sound individual falls short because it is without objective measurable standard. Left to our own self to decide what is good will always lead to a pantheistic view; one without hope, self-serving and motivated to satisfy any desire that we think is correct. Successful living depends on an established guide of moral standards, accountability, and selflessness. Hamlet, Laertes, and Alfred have set their hearts and minds to do just as they please without regard how their actions affect others and without regard to moral standards. Hamlet and Laertes have settled in their own mind that the way to find peace is through the death of the person that murdered their fathers. T.S. Eliot acknowledges in, The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism, “In the character Hamlet it is the buffoonery of an emotion which can find no outlet in action… The intense feeling, ecstatic or terrible, without an object or...
