CLAUDIUS      ’Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,

To give these mourning duties to your father,

But you must know your father lost a father,

That father lost lost his, and the survivor bound

In filial obligation for some term

To do obsequious sorrow; but to persever

In obstinate condolement is a course

Of impious stubbornness…  (1.2.87-94)

Claudius meets Hamlet’s long howl of furious grief with a speech that’s nearly three times the length, barely drawing breath (this is just the opening movement) in a smooth, silky, increasingly barbed response. Well that’s all very well, he says, condescendingly, ’tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet (making him sound weak, a well-behaved little boy rather than an adult in the grip of complex emotions) to give these mourning duties to your father. Jolly good show, you’ve played the part really, really well, done it all by the book. But, at the same time, you must know your father lost a father, that father lost lost his. It’s just the way of the world: your father’s dead, yes, but so’s his own father (my father too, incidentally), and his own father. Nothing remarkable at all: what makes you think you’re special? Grow up! Yes, the survivor—the bereaved son—is bound in filial obligation for some term to do obsequious sorrow: of course there’s got to be a decent period of mourning, all proprieties observed. There have to be limits, though! Anything else is just self-indulgence and pig-headedness, a kind of rebellion against the natural order of things as much as the social niceties; to persever in obstinate condolement is a course of impious stubbornness. What was fit and proper is rapidly becoming a kind of profanation. You’re choosing to do this! No one’s making you! And you’re making it all about you! Claudius is needling from multiple angles with tremendous, violent efficiency, and he’s got much more to say.