Brevity is the soul of wit

Alright, confession time: I love it when my sense of humor is praised. Making people laugh is one of the best feelings in the world, and I am constantly trying to become more funny. For this reason, I stopped short when I read the following words: "brevity is the soul of wit" (Hamlet, 2.2.97). This is funny because Polonius, the speaker of these words, is not someone whose speeches would be described as concise or brief. However, I think that while we sometimes characterize Polonius as a sort of villain in Hamlet, we also know that he also gives good advice, proven by the fact that his "to thine own self be true" phrase is a frequently-echoed piece of advice today. The more I thought about it, the more I realized how true this idea is. The funniest jokes are not usually lengthy or drawn-out. Rather, it is the perfectly-phrased, short-phrased expressions that really cause us to laugh. How fascinating is it that we can even learn how to be more funny from Shakespeare. The genius of his writing is displayed by the fact that hundreds of years after he lived, we continue to apply his ideas to our modern world. 

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