Polonius is no comedian.

Who played Hamlet in this production? I don't think I've seen it.

I did see Mel Gibson do the lead in his production. He was better than I expected.

Sam Shepparrd plays the dead king.

Polonius goes around spouting off wonderful advice to everybody else - "to thine own self be true," "neither a borrower nor a lender be," etc. etc. (Some Fundamentalist Xians still think those Shakespeare quotes are Bible verses, and I am most likely related to them.)

But in his personal life, Polonius is a garrulous blowhard, a gossip and a busybody. Whose behind-the-curtain snooping ends up getting him killed and driving Ophelia insane.

Shakespeare experts have fun imagining if the protagonists were swapped in Hamlet and Othello. Hamlet would have seen thru Iago in about 10 nanoseconds and whacked him straightaway. Othello would have stayed sane and probably lived happily ever after with Ophelia. If not so happily with his windbag father-in-law.

Not being any kind of expert, my own favorite Shakespeare character is Richard III. A completely rotten fellow who's still so fascinating you can't help admiring him. Like when he speaks about his brother, the Duke of Clarence:

Simple, plain Clarence! I do love thee so,
That I will shortly send thy soul to heaven,
If heaven will take the present at our hands...

It a great film, goes into the whole play and makes it a lot easier to understand.

BTW, that is why Bill Murray was the perfect person to be cast as Polonius.

The rest of the cast and all the special modern touches made it hard to watch.