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Gifford notes that “In the mid-Victorian world, the period of a son’s deep mourning for his mother (black suit, shoes, socks, and tie and a sharply limited social life) would have been a year and a day. By 1904 the rules had been considerably relaxed, but Stephen is adhering to the letter of the old law.” We learn in Ithaca that Stephen's mother was buried on 26 June 1903, so only a few more days remain before the old custom will allow Stephen to enter what the Victorians called "half-mourning," when gray clothes could substitute for black.

To this realistic context for Stephen's behavior Joyce adds a symbolic parallel to an important literary text, because Hamlet too insists dressing in formal mourning attire when others in his world recommend moving on with life. The contrast, later in Telemachus, between Stephen's mourning clothes and the “gay attires” of Mulligan and Haines furthers this resemblance, since Hamlet first appears in a scene of high court ceremony where everyone else is dressed festively to celebrate marriage and dynastic stability, and his mother urges him to "cast thy nighted colour off." Mulligan's mocking rebuke—"Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers"—further allies him with Gertrude and Claudius.

As Bloom walks down the sunny side of the street in Calypso he thinks, "Be a warm day I fancy. Specially in these black clothes feel it more.... But I couldn't go in that light suit. Make a picnic of it." His scrupulous adherence to the customs of mourning (he will be attending Paddy Dignam's funeral later in the morning) associates him with Stephen, and throughout the day the two men will be dressed alike. The implicit allusion to Hamlet invests the physical resemblance with a symbolic suggestion that both men are outsiders, skeptical and alienated. It also contributes to the idea that they may somehow play the roles of father and son.