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