The question of what the proper mourning period would be, like many things in the text, is ambiguous!
It seems that the mourning period for a king would have been sometime between 6 months and 1 year. In general, it was not uncommon for widows to remarry within the first year of their husband’s death. Gertrude’s period of being a widow would have been considered quite short, though.
HOWEVER! Complicating the situation is the fact that English culture in the last half of the sixteenth century witnessed an intense Protestant campaign against both the expression of grief and the expression of comfort or condolence toward those in mourning. Sixteenth Century treatises on mourning “regard grief as a sign of irrationality, weakness, inadequate self-control and impiety” (Mullaney) (Note: impiety means a lack of reverence for God.) This trend is represented in Ben Jonson’s (1572- 1637) poem Of Death:
He that feares death, or mournes it, in the iust,
Shewes of the resurrection little trust
The degree to which such strictures affected how people felt grief in the period of course uncertain, for a brief period of time however, “they clearly altered the decorum of bereavement, casting a moralizing and religiously charged pall over traditionally available expressions of grief, whether public rites or private rituals and practices.” (Mullaney) This sheds light on Claudius and Gertrude’s reprimand of Hamlet’s grief. Criticism of one’s expressions of sadness may have been a society-wide practice.
It seems that the mourning period for a king would have been sometime between 6 months and 1 year. In general, it was not uncommon for widows to remarry within the first year of their husband’s death. Gertrude’s period of being a widow would have been considered quite short, though.
HOWEVER! Complicating the situation is the fact that English culture in the last half of the sixteenth century witnessed an intense Protestant campaign against both the expression of grief and the expression of comfort or condolence toward those in mourning. Sixteenth Century treatises on mourning “regard grief as a sign of irrationality, weakness, inadequate self-control and impiety” (Mullaney) (Note: impiety means a lack of reverence for God.) This trend is represented in Ben Jonson’s (1572- 1637) poem Of Death:
He that feares death, or mournes it, in the iust,
Shewes of the resurrection little trust
The degree to which such strictures affected how people felt grief in the period of course uncertain, for a brief period of time however, “they clearly altered the decorum of bereavement, casting a moralizing and religiously charged pall over traditionally available expressions of grief, whether public rites or private rituals and practices.” (Mullaney) This sheds light on Claudius and Gertrude’s reprimand of Hamlet’s grief. Criticism of one’s expressions of sadness may have been a society-wide practice.