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Here’s a sneak peek at Sunday’s column:

In the first act of “Hamlet,” a father, Polonius, offers advice to his son, Laertes, who’s about to embark on a journey to Paris.

It’s a famous speech, and it’s given us some memorable lines: “Neither a borrower nor a lender be,” for example, hails from this speech, as does “This above all: To thine ownself be true.”

It ends with Polonius telling his son, “Farewell:

my blessing season this in thee!” To see the full speech, click here.

A little later in the play, in a scene that directors frequently choose to omit, Polonius instructs his servant Reynaldo to spy on his son when he’s living it up in Paris.

As the father of a daughter who graduates on Monday from high school, I’ve been thinking a lot these days about Polonius and his advice, largely thanks to an assignment that a teacher handed out to parents.

Dena Minato, who teaches literature at Corvallis High School (and has a daughter of her own graduating from Crescent Valley High School this year), sent copies of Polonius’ speech to parents with instructions to use it as they saw fit to craft a letter of advice to their graduating seniors.

Now, Polonius typically is depicted in productions of “Hamlet” as either a doddering fool or a conniving schemer. (It says something about the genius of Shakespeare that the text supports either interpretation.)

So, in some ways, we’re meant to view his speech to his son in a negative fashion: At best, it’s a collection of sentimental ramblings. At worst, it’s hypocrisy – words of advice from someone who has no intention of living up to them.

This weekend, though, I’m prepared to give Polonius the benefit of the doubt. This weekend, I understand the urge to bid bon voyage to my daughter with lofty and well-meaning platitudes. (Be sure to dance! Don’t forget to wear sunscreen!)

But you know what? I also understand why Polonius might feel it’s a good idea to spy on his offspring.

I haven’t dispatched spies to the campus where my daughter will be attending college – yet. But I did have a chance to compare thoughts with

Minato and some other parents, and in general, we hit similar notes in our letters.

Trust your instincts, we wrote. Treat your body well. Be curious. Preserve some privacy, even in a world where the temptation is to post every detail of your life on Facebook.

Explore. Take risks. Dream dreams. Talk to strangers, even if they might seem a little sketchy from time to time. Tell stories. Listen to stories. Try to be kind, even though it’s hard, really hard. Keep your room a little bit cleaner than you do now.

It’s all well-meaning advice. But, really, it’s the work of parents who have awoken in the last month or so to realize that the time for face-to-face parenting suddenly has grown terribly short. So here: We’re going to throw a lot of last-second advice against the wall, like a pot of undercooked spaghetti, and hope that something sticks.

And probably something will stick. But somehow it seems so inadequate.

That’s where the spying part could come in handy. Ah, Polonius, you were wiser than you seemed. Too bad about that encounter with Hamlet in Act III.

 

 

 

 

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