what is the proper mourning period
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 husbandâs death. Gertrudeâs period of being a widow would have been considered quite short, though.