CLAUDIUS …’tis unmanly grief,
It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,
A heart unfortified, or mind impatient,
An understanding simple and unschooled;
For what we know must be, and is as common
As any the most vulgar thing to sense –
Why should we in our peevish opposition
Take it to heart? (1.2.94-101)
Claudius is battering away at his nephew: you’re behaving like a foolish child, he says. ’Tis unmanly grief—man up! sort of, but also grow up, start behaving like a grown-up. Big boys don’t cry, yes, but also he’s suggesting that Hamlet is failing as a socially mature individual, less than a person, almost less than human, by continuing to be so consumed by grief. Next angle: it shows a will most incorrect to heaven—you’re rejecting God’s will, rejecting Christian consolation and hope—a heart unfortified, or mind impatient; you’re simply being weak and pathetic, as well as flirting with a kind of blasphemy, even. You are demonstrating that you have an understanding simple and unschooled—needling at Hamlet’s sense of himself as a scholar, an intellectual: how can you not just ‘get’ this, like everyone else does, accept the reality of death, it happens, do the decent thing move on? You must at least have read about it… Yes, it’s sad, but everyone else is managing; you’re embarrassing yourself and you’re starting to embarrass other people too, not least me and your mother. For what we know must be—death—and is as common (pointedly taking up the word that Hamlet taunted his mother with) as any the most vulgar thing to sense: death’s normal, it comes to everyone (including the vulgar and the common, implicitly; there’s a class angle here too, as well as a gendered one: you’re letting the side down, even the proles can deal with death better than you). Why should we in our peevish opposition take it to heart? You can’t do anything to change the reality of death so—after a certain point—just stop letting it get to you so much! You’re like a child having a tantrum. Life’s not fair, so stop acting out and just.get.a.grip.