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Who really said it

Brevity is the soul of wit

Written by William Shakespeare 1564–1616 · English playwright, poet and actor
Verified Free to reuse

Genuine Shakespeare, and locatable to the line: it is spoken by Polonius in Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2, and stands in the 1604 quarto as well as the 1623 First Folio. The catch is that Shakespeare wrote it as a self-satirising line for the play’s biggest windbag, and that “wit” then meant wisdom, not humour.

Last verified 29 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“Brevity is the soul of wit” William Shakespeare, "Brevity is the soul of wit" — spoken by Polonius in Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2. Full line: "Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, / And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, / I will be brief." Printed in the 1604 quarto and in the First Folio of 1623 (TLN 1117). Verified via Folger Shakespeare Library and Internet Shakespeare Editions.

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Provenance

The source

Work
Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2
Speaker
Polonius, reporting to Claudius and Gertrude on the prince’s madness
In print
The 1604 quarto (the Folger’s copy); the First Folio of 1623, at TLN 1117
Folio wording
“Therefore, since Breuitie is the Soule of Wit,”

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. Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2

Four lines of pure padding, and then a boast about not padding. Polonius keeps going after this for some time before he reaches anything resembling a point.

First Folio (1623), old-spelling transcription
Read the line at TLN 1117, Internet Shakespeare Editions
Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2 at the Folger Shakespeare Library

How we verified this

Public domain

Hamlet was in print in Shakespeare’s lifetime — the Folger dates the “good quarto” to 1604 in some copies and 1605 in others, and the play was collected in the First Folio of 1623. Any work published that long before 1931 is in the public domain in the United States, so the text of the line carries no copyright; only a modern editor’s apparatus, notes or glosses in a particular edition could.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

What gets garbled

The attribution is right, which is unusual for a line this famous. What travels wrongly is who says it, what it meant, and where it stops.

Shakespeare, in his own voice misread

Shakespeare wrote it, but he gave it to Polonius as self-satire. myShakespeare’s note on the line is blunt about the effect: “The irony here is of course that Polonius is being anything but brief” ↗. Quoting it as the author’s sincere maxim throws away the point.

the modern sense of “wit” as humour shifted

Quote Investigator notes that “in the Bard’s time the word ‘wit’ had a different sense, and the adage meant roughly: the essence of wisdom is being concise” ↗. Read as advice about comedy, it is a different sentence from the one Shakespeare wrote.

the free-standing six-word version truncated

In the play the clause is subordinate and paired with its opposite: “Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, / And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, / I will be brief. Your noble son is mad.” ↗ The aphorism as usually quoted drops both the “since” and the tediousness half of the figure.

Dorothy Parker different line

Parker’s line is the parody, not the original. Quote Investigator concludes that “Dorothy Parker should be credited with the expression ‘Brevity is the soul of lingerie’” ↗, in a caption she wrote for Vogue in October 1916, reusing it in Vanity Fair in May 1919.

The six words are Shakespeare’s, written for Polonius in Hamlet 2.2 and in print by 1604 — the 1623 Folio sets them at TLN 1117 ↗. They just were never meant to be taken at face value.

Context

Why it matters

Polonius has been sent to explain what is wrong with the prince, and instead of explaining it he circles the subject — majesty, duty, why day is day and night night — before announcing that he will not waste anyone’s time. The maxim is the hinge of a joke: he praises brevity in the middle of the most tediously padded speech he has yet delivered, and myShakespeare puts it plainly — “The irony here is of course that Polonius is being anything but brief” ↗.

The line then walked out of the play and lost the joke. Quoted alone it reads as straightforward writing advice, which is roughly the opposite of its dramatic function, and it acquired a second meaning along the way: Quote Investigator notes that in Shakespeare’s time “wit” meant wisdom, so the adage meant that the essence of wisdom is being concise ↗ — not that short jokes are funnier.

A windbag’s excuse for not being a windbag, now quoted as if it were a rule.

The 1604 quarto and the 1623 Folio do not read identically

The version most people recite — “Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit” — matches the First Folio, where Internet Shakespeare Editions prints “Therefore, since Breuitie is the Soule of Wit,” at TLN 1117 ↗. Quote Investigator, reproducing the 1604 quarto held by the Folger, gives it without the “since”: “Therefore breuitie is the soule of wit, And tediousnes the lymmes and outward florishes, I will be briefe, your noble sonne is mad” ↗. Either way the six famous words are identical; only the conjunction moves.

That difference is ordinary for this play. The Folger explains that Hamlet survives in three early printings — a 1603 quarto it calls “generally unreliable as a witness to what was written for the stage” ↗, the “good quarto” dated 1604 in some copies and 1605 in others, and the 1623 Folio — and that modern editions, its own included, blend the second quarto with as much of the Folio as they can.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Simplicity Wisdom

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Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2 (modern text)folger.edu

The Folger Shakespeare Library's edited text of the scene, containing Polonius's full speech and the line itself.
Hamlet, First Folio 1623 — old-spelling textinternetshakespeare.uvic.ca

Diplomatic transcription of the 1623 Folio; the line stands at TLN 1117 as "Therefore, since Breuitie is the Soule of Wit,".
Quote Origin: Brevity Is the Soul of Lingeriequoteinvestigator.com

Quote Investigator on the Shakespeare original (with the 1604 quarto wording and the older sense of "wit") and on Dorothy Parker's famous riff.
Hamlet — quotation indexen.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote's sourced Hamlet page, listing the line under Polonius, Act II, scene ii.
An Introduction to This Text: Hamletfolger.edu

Folger's account of the 1603 quarto, the 1604/1605 "good quarto" and the 1623 Folio, and how modern editions combine them.
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarkgutenberg.org

Free full text of the play; independently confirms the line in Polonius's speech.

The real author

About William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

1564–1616 · English playwright, poet and actor

Shakespeare was baptised at Stratford-upon-Avon on 26 April 1564 and died on 23 April 1616; the traditional birth date of 23 April 1564 is given even though the exact day is unknown. He worked as an actor and house dramatist in London, and is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language. Hamlet is the source of an unusual number of lines that escaped the play and became proverbs on their own — this is one of them, and like several others it was written to be faintly ridiculous in its original mouth.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

William Shakespeare, Hamlet, act 2, scene 2 (spoken by Polonius). Old-spelling text: The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke, First Folio (1623), TLN 1117, Internet Shakespeare Editions; the line also appears in the 1604 quarto held by the Folger Shakespeare Library. Modern text: Hamlet, Folger Shakespeare Library.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Brevity is the soul of wit’?” Last verified 29 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/brevity-is-the-soul-of-wit/

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