CLAUDIUS                  Fie, ’tis a fault to heaven,

A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,

To reason most absurd, whose common theme

Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried

From the first corpse till he that died today

‘This must be so.’ We pray you throw to earth

This unprevailing woe, and think of us

As of a father, for let the world take note

You are the most immediate to our throne,

And with no less nobility of love

Than that which dearest father bears his son

Do I impart toward you.       (1.2.101-112)

Claudius is relentless in rebuking, even mocking, his nephew Hamlet’s grief: fie, ’tis a fault to heaven, a fault against the dead: you’re simply wrong, in the eyes of God, and of the dead, specifically your father, too; you’re letting him down, both by continuing to mourn for him when he’s in heaven, and by behaving like a foolish child. It’s a fault to nature, and to reason most absurd: you’re going against the natural order of things, behaving unnaturally; you’re behaving irrationally, like a fool—because the common theme of both nature and reason, the way of the world, of human life and society, is the death of fathers—and who still hath cried from the first corpse till he that died today ‘this must be so’. There’s a performative frustration here—how can you not just get this? are you being wilfully obtuse, here, boy?—and room for a sycophantic, if nervous, laugh from the courtiers, or perhaps a restraining glance, a hand on the arm from Gertrude: do you need to labour it quite so much? (The first corpse, of course, was not a father mourned by his son, but a brother, Abel, killed by his brother, Cain.)

So we pray you throw to earth this unprevailing woe: your stubborn persistence in continuing to mourn is pointless; cast it away, as if into your father’s grave. Then a final cruel twist of the knife: and think of us as of a father—you’re not my dad, you could never be my dad! will Hamlet even give his uncle the satisfaction of an incredulous, scornful stare?—(note the ostentatious royal plural: I’m the king, of course I could step into your father’s shoes as your father too)—pulling back immediately into public magnanimity, and away from the boiling point of intimate family dynamics: for let the world take note you are the most immediate to our throne: you’re my heir! (For now. In some productions, depending on casting, there can be a gesture at the possibility of Gertrude having Claudius’s child. Moot whether Hamlet would have expected to become king after his father’s death, but the Danish monarchy is elective etc etc.) And with no less nobility of love than that which dearest father bears his son do I impart toward you. I’ll love you like my own son; I’m great like that.