Read the excerpt from act iv of hamlet.

claudius: not that i think you did not love your father, but that i know love is begun by time, and that i see, in passages of proof, time qualifies the spark and fire of it . . that we would do, we should do when we would, for this 'would' changes, and hath abatements and delays as many as there are tongues, are hands, are accidents; and then this 'should' is like a spendthrift sigh, that hurts by easing. but, to the quick o' the ulcer; hamlet comes back; what would you undertake to show yourself your father's son in deed more than in words?

claudius’s reaction advances the central conflict of the play because he