The first sentence

The family of Dashwood had been long settled in Sussex.

This is the shortest opening sentence of the six Austen novels. Although it is a little shorter than the opening sentence of Northanger Abbey, an intriguing thing is that Jane Austen's sentences get longer with each novel. By the time she hits Persuasion, Austen writes an opening sentence that is long enough and convoluted enough to be the work of Henry James. (That's not a good thing.)

But I have other fish to fry here. There is an "historical" irony in the sentence. For the very first thing that will happen is that a subsection of the Dashwood family will get unsettled.

The estate in Sussex, a southern county, is ironically called "Norland". And, picking up my Hamlet theme, there is something rotten in this Northern Land. And the question I think we need to ask ourselves is whether this rotten thing is a recent occurence or whether there has long been something wrong with the Dashwood family settled in Norland.

On the surface, the something rotten (not unlike Hamlet) is manifested in the request of a dead father to his son who is lately returned to the estate. Unlike Shakespeare, there can be no ghosts in Austen so the request is made on the deathbed. Like Shakespeare it sets up a clear moral duty and the son, Mr. John Dashwood, means to do something about it.

There, the similarity with Hamlet would seem to stop but there is more and more and more.