Speaking too much is unmanly, while acting (here it means playing) is masculine. This may lead us to claim – and enjoy a certain degree of safety in our claim – that masculinity may be seen as “a simple external artifice.” (Stanisilavski 30) In the second scene the king admonishes his nephew for his “unmanly grief” (Hamlet, I, ii, 94). Instead, he recommends “obsequious sorrow” (Hamlet, I, ii, 92). The word obsequious (derived from obsequies) emphasize the ritualistic (spectacular but formal) aspect of “manly grief”. In this sense, it probably is the equivalent of the catholic “feigned righteousness”. Hamlet, on the contrary, describes his sorrow as real rather than feigned. He speaks of it as lying within. To Hamlet, the essence lies within.