POLONIUS                  This business is well ended.

My liege and madam, to expostulate

What majesty should be, what duty is,

Why day is day, night night, and time is time,

Were nothing but to waste night, day and time;

Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit

And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes.

I will be brief: your noble son is mad.

Mad call I it, for to define true madness,

What is’t but to be nothing else but mad?

But let that go.           (2.2.85-95)

This business is well ended, observes Polonius, approvingly; diplomacy, the business of government, all running smoothly! And then he shifts, with a baroque, circumlocutory version of ‘don’t shoot the messenger’—which adds suspense (Gertrude really desperate to solve this, Claudius on edge and trying not to show it), frustration at his pomposity, comedy at the ridiculousness of it—and also, potentially, pathos (increased, perhaps, if Ophelia’s there: she’s relying on him and he’s not coping). My liege and madam, formal as ever, to expostulate what majesty should be, what duty is (this makes sense, sort of: I know my place, but sometimes that place is to speak hard truths and bring unpleasant news)—and then, what can sometimes be played as a little epistemological reverie: your majesty and my duty are absolutes, unquestionable, and questioning them or any of their prerogatives would be as pointless and as foolish as asking why day is day, night night, and time is time. Ha! To ask that—it would be nothing but to waste night, day and time. (You are wasting our time, Claudius might start to say; much scope for speaking looks and gestures, insights into the state of the royal marriage, never mind Ophelia’s agonised embarrassment if she’s there.)

Therefore—one option is seamless sententiousness, another is a realisation that he’s not doing well here, that he has to get out of this rhetorical cul de sac—since brevity is the soul of wit (it always gets a laugh, but it can be pathetic too, depending on how painfully self-aware he is, how much of an effort he’s making) and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes (brevity is the soul, everything else is secondary, even superfluous—like a body, it seems) I will be brief. Polonius is steeling himself, partly, this flailing has been about delay, too; he’s nervous: your noble son is mad. There, I’ve said it. And an immediate retreat; mad call I it—that’s what I’m calling it, for the moment, but to define true madness, what is’t but to be nothing else but mad? And while that’s partly a return to his previous semantic quibbling, it’s also making a larger point: what’s madness anyway? how is it even to be defined? But let that go. A slight moment of deflation, as he starts to question this too? or self-satisfaction? Point made, bad news delivered, truth told.