This illustration of the closet scene in Act 3 Scene 4 shows Gertrude and Hamlet in distinctively 18th-century costumes and wigs. In this passage Gertrude swears on her life to keep Hamlet's sanity a secret, and to keep her own knowledge of her first husband's murder a secret from her second husband – his murderer.
Queen Gertrude sets the events of the play in motion by marrying her brother-in-law, King Claudius. She is the one who witnesses Hamlet's murder of Polonius, and reports the murder to King Claudius. At the end of the play, she dies by drinking poisoned wine that had been intended for Hamlet.
Gertrude reveals no guilt in her marriage with Claudius after the recent murder of her husband, and Hamlet begins to show signs of jealousy towards Claudius. According to Hamlet, she scarcely mourned her husband's death before marrying Claudius.
While she does keep her promise not to reveal that Hamlet was only pretending to be insane, the immediate and frank way in which she tells Claudius about Hamlet's behavior and his murder of Polonius implies that she sees herself as allied to the king rather than to her son.
Even though Hamlet lashes out at her with all the rage he can muster, Gertrude remains faithful to him, protecting him fron the King. And, although her love for Claudius is wrong by moral standards, she is now his queen, and remains loyal to him.
In this passage Gertrude swears on her life to keep Hamlet's sanity a secret, and to keep her own knowledge of her first husband's murder a secret from her second husband – his murderer.
Gertrude betrays Hamlet and the late King Hamlet by marrying Claudius. Hamlet, being still depressed about his father's death was further upset and felt betrayed by his mother when she quickly married Claudius.
Act 2, scene 2 Claudius and Gertrude set Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two boyhood friends of Hamlet, to spy on him.
Gertrude loves her son. At the beginning of the play, she could have shown more empathy for Hamlet, who just lost his father. Nevertheless, throughout the story, Gertrude continuously defends her son in front of Claudius. Her actions prove that she loves him.
Hamlet and His Mother's Relationship
Through her relationship with her son Hamlet, Shakespeare paints a picture of betrayal. Gertrude marries the brother of Hamlet's father and this why Hamlet is upset with his mother. In his opinion, remarriage is a tremendous act of betrayal.
Gertrude and Claudius marry each other while Hamlet is still grieving the death of his father. Even though he does not know the new king is the murderer, Hamlet is explicitly against the marriage for some reason, and he keeps accusing his mother of lust until she regrets her decision.
Gertrude feels really ashamed ot her behaviour after Hamlet has spoken daggers to her. She appeals to him not to go on talking to her in this manner. She says that he has turned her eyes into her very soul where now she such deep stains as would never be erased from there.
Claudius's love for Gertrude may be sincere, but it also seems likely that he married her as a strategic move, to help him win the throne away from Hamlet after the death of the king.
Hamlet tries desperately to convince Gertrude that he is not mad but has merely feigned madness all along, and he urges her to forsake Claudius and regain her good conscience. He urges her as well not to reveal to Claudius that his madness has been an act.
Also, Gertrude reports Ophelia's death in one of the most lovely, poignant, poetic speeches in all of Shakespeare. She uses nature, water, and flower imagery to show how she is now free of the cruel human world.
She never exhibits the ability to think critically about her situation, but seems merely to move instinctively toward seemingly safe choices, as when she immediately runs to Claudius after her confrontation with Hamlet.
When Claudius offers Hamlet the poisoned goblet of wine, Hamlet refuses, and Gertrude picks up the cup instead. Toasting Hamlet, she drinks the poison, ensuring her eventual death.
The intimate mother-son relationship is revealed in the film primarily through the kisses that Hamlet and Gertrude exchange. This occurs once at the beginning of the film in a semi-close-up camera shot when the queen asks her son to stay at Elsinore.
The bed is also much more lit than the rest of the room that emphasizes the importance of it. The way Gertrude kisses Hamlet in the Olivier, can be signifiers of the sexuality that is going in between her and Hamlet.
So she has resolved that at the moment of informing Laertes of the sad event she must urge that it was purely accidental, while to lessen the bitterness of it she will assure him that the death was painless, Ophelia's mind having too far gone for her to feel 'her own distress.
In her defense, as a woman, Gertrude likely felt pressure to remarry, especially in a position as queen of Denmark. She cares deeply for Hamlet. Still, her loyalty lies most closely with Claudius, not Hamlet, as she defers to any decision made by Claudius on Hamlet's behalf.
Although Gertrude seems to be a villain, she turns into a victim that leads to her demise. To begin, Gertrude is a victim because she is naive that eventually leads to her death. At the end of the play when Hamlet and Laertes are fencing, Gertrude unknowingly drinks the cup of wine filled with poison.
In Sigmund Freud's concept, which Shakespeare was familiar with, it is proposed in Hamlet that he and his mother kiss because Hamlet no longer wants to allow his mother to sleep with Claudius.
Hamlet is cruel towards his mother and ex girlfriend because of his mother's affair with his uncle and Ophelia's obedience to her controlling father.
159-60). Therefore, marrying Claudius was possibly the only way for Gertrude to keep the crown in the same family and give Hamlet a chance to be a king but also delay his ascension to the throne. This scheme works only with the assumption that Gertrude loves her son.