Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death
The memory be green, and that it us befitted
To bear our hearts in grief and our whole kingdom
To be contracted in one brow of woe…
Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,
The imperial jointress to this warlike state,
Have we, as ’twere with a defeated joy, –
With an auspicious and a dropping eye,
With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,
In equal scale weighing delight and dole, –
Taken to wife. Nor have we herein barr’d
Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone
With this affair along.
– William Shakespeare
Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. Claudius’ first appearance depicts him giving a speech to Queen Gertrude, Hamlet, Polonius and other attendants, that is full of startling hypocrisy. He orders everyone to mourn deeply the death of his brother, the former King Hamlet. He justifies his marriage to his “sometime sister” and King Hamlet’s widow Gertrude and downplays any immorality people may see in it. The audience is not yet aware of the truth of King Hamlet’s murder (by Claudius it will be revealed), and the hypocrisy of Claudius who is not actually mourning King Hamlet’s death. It is an irony to hear him refer to "our dead brother", when he in fact killed him.