From the desk of Roland Rocchiccioli – 15 November

“This above all: to thine own self be true,” says Polonius.  I wonder, often, exactly what Shakespeare meant by that line from Hamlet.

THE first reading is obvious; however, when you start to rehearse the play, and consider its context and position in the script, it takes on many connotations. It is why Hamlet is such a complex piece. The interpretations are myriad; all of which are, arguably, valid. It is why it is such an irritating play to direct.

Actors argue and debate, relentlessly, over one line of iambic pentameter. What is the Dane saying? It makes one want to shout, “Will you just say the bloody line and leave it for the audience to decide for themselves?” More is the pity, but in this day and age that would be deemed politically incorrect; a serious breach of rehearsal protocols. One would be sent for some form of behavioural therapy.

Truth is the great challenge for modern society, and one of its most lamentable victims. Now, more than ever, there are countless shades of grey. The 24-hour news cycle has become infotainment. Half-truths and Chinese whispers taint news reporting. There is little regard for the revered tenet of innocent until proven guilty. Fact has been tarnished by innuendo and editorialising. Impartiality has fallen victim to prurience. Lurid detail, preferably with pictures, is the first choice. The more sensational the story, the more likely it is to be given prominent space or airtime. News, and its truth, has become a form of ‘show-and-tell’. The old newsroom adage: I know what a cat up a tree looks like – is no longer applicable. It is imperative we see the cat up the tree!

Even our courts of law are contaminated by the calculated divergence from the paths of veracity. Arguments are spurious, oftentimes risible. Audacious technicalities are bandied with enthusiasm, and often with a winning outcome. Is it valid to argue the victim died not from the coward-punch which rendered them unconscious, but from carelessly hitting their head on the pavement when they landed? Is that the truth, or is it a distortion thereof? Is the veracity of justice about winning, facts notwithstanding?

What about ‘the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?’ Are we now so self-centred we will say, and do, anything to achieve a rewarding outcome, regardless?

It used to be: I say what I mean, and I mean what I say. Not any longer. All that has gone for a Burton. The former Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, admitted he did not always tell the Gospel truth. There were, according to him, core, and non-core, values. What does that mean? Would it be an unreasonable quantum leap to take that as his imprimatur to expediently tamper with the truth? Would that be classified as a lie?

What, precisely, did the former Prime Minister, John Howard, mean when he argued, stridently, there are core and non-core promises? The conundrum is: how does one recognise the one from the other? Is truth in the eye of beholder, only?

When I wrote my childhood biography, And Be Home Before Dark, a family member said of it, dismissively, “It’s all lies!” In my defence, someone older, and who knew me as a child, said, “It’s the truth. All of it. I was there. I know what happened!”

My childhood, like many of my generation, was, for all its peccadilloes, an age of innocence. We believed, categorically, if we did not tell the truth our noses would grow, like Pinocchio’s. I knew it to be true because I had a magnificently illustrated Italian version of the fairy tale.

The Oxford Dictionary defines truth as ‘a fact or belief that is accepted as true’. Indubitably, therein lies the problem. Accepted, is the operative word in that simple statement. What we accept, or believe, is not always fact, but with repetition it flourishes to become the accepted known truth.

Roland can be heard always speaking the truth on RADIO 3BA, every Monday morning, 10.45 and contacted via [email protected].