Question

Need help please!!!

Hamlet - Shakespeare
Act 3, Scene 1


Rosencrantz and Guildenstern don't have much helpful information to share with the royal couple, so King Claudius and Polonius move forward with their plan to spy on Hamlet and Ophelia. right before Hamlet enters, Polonius says that people who are sinners often use "devotion's visage and pious action" to "sugar o'er the devil himself." what does Polonius mean?

Answer 1

Polonius is using his daughter to spy her conversation with Hamlet. He teaches how to act naturally, how to walk and pretend that she is reading.

In that last phrase, he is saying that we humans often act in deceitful ways, for which we are to blame.

He admits that he is making a mistake, in teaching that kind of behaviour to his own daughter.