This speech comes right after Gertrude tries (badly) to console her son by saying 'Thou know'st 'tis common / All that lives must die / Passing through nature to eternity.' (In other words, 'I know you're sad about your dead dad but have you considered that everyone dies?')

Hamlet snaps back 'Ay, mad, it is common,’ which is lowkey insulting to say to a queen -- it implies that she's behaving in a common, vulgar way -- because Hamlet is a master at lowkey insults. He goes into his iconic 'I know not seems' speech, which can also be played as a lowkey insult (picking on his mother for seeming to grieve his father and then moving on, while he's grieving truly) or as a sincere outburst of grief as he tries to get his mother to understand.

The First Claudus in the supercut -- my initial inspiration Claudius -- takes Hamlet's surliness and turns it right the fuck back on him. He finds a way to have the plausible deniability of appearing to console Hamlet with Gertrude, while deliberately twisting in insults. The way he drops his voice for 'tis unmanly grief' is something in my head for some of Claudius’s cruelest and cattiest moments. (Something else I find interesting is that, even though this is how he convinces Hamlet to stay in Elsinore, it’s almost like he’s softening up Hamlet so Gertrude can make the request and be heard. He just wants his wife to be happy.)

The Second Claudius is trying to be a good stepdad, which is hard when your stepson’s problems are because of a little murder you did. He plays his Claudius with a lot of regrets. I'm deeply impressed by the actor because the words of the text haven't changed at all! All the little insults (impious stubbornness, unmanly grief, heart unfortified, mind impatient, understanding simple and unschooled, &c) are still in there! He actually gets more of them than the First Claudius. But they're unintentionally wounding rather than intentionally, and it's a great example of how different a character's intentions can look depending on how they're played.

The Third Claudius is an interesting mix. You see him manage the court in a careful, politic way, but Hamlet resists being managed, so Claudius starts pushing it a little too hard. There's more of a 'did he just fucking say that?' reaction from the other actors. And then he switches his tactics to overwhelming Hamlet with words in a reasonable cadence and outside social pressure until it's too awkward to say no.

(I also included a little more for the third one so you can see how untrue it is when Claudius says 'this gentle and unforced accord sits smiling to my heart' as he forces Hamlet to pose for a photo op. This fucked-up royal family and their constant publicity.)

In general, the fun thing about analyzing any given speech of Claudius's is that he’s so good at getting away with not saying anything technically wrong while still being very cutting. It's cool to see how different actors take that! I’d say the big difference, other than that the First Claudius is being a catty little bitch, is that the First Claudius knows what he's doing the whole time. He's wielding his words as weapons to hurt so he can revenge a petty slight against his wife, then gathering up the whole court to see how gracious and welcoming he is to his stepson … because he's a terrible man and my special guy.

(Okay, one more thing -- I said before that my favorite Claudiuses wouldn't like each other. The First Claudius would think the Second Claudius is a drip and the Third Claudius is too forceful, the second would be lowkey terrified of the other two Claudiuses and trying to make peace, and the Third Claudius would keep his cool and plot the other two's downfall because at least he's willing to use force to get what he wants. I think my Claudius has a blend of the First Claudius’s cutting social graces and defensiveness for people he cares about, the Second Claudius’s vulnerability and immediate regret for his actions while still being unable to tell the truth, and the Third Claudius’s desperate tactic-switching while keeping a cool profile. So he doesn’t get along very well with himself. Man looked at multiple versions of himself and went ‘wow we all kind of suck, and we’re stuck like this, hate that for us.’)