Exploring the character of Gertrude Gertrude is Hamlet's mother and Queen of Denmark. She was married to the murdered King Hamlet (represented by the Ghost in the play) and has subsequently wed Claudius, his brother.
Hamlet loved his mother and wanted to forgive her, but he planned to revenge his uncle who practically ruined his family. Hamlet loved his mother without feeling he was betraying his father. He loved her as a son, although she remarried very soon after his father's death.
According to Hamlet, she scarcely mourned her husband's death before marrying Claudius. Her name may derive from Gertrude of Bavaria, who was Queen of Denmark in the late 12th century.
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.
The reader quickly learns that Hamlet is upset with his mother because she married Hamlet's uncle instead of grieving for his father. Hamlet sees it as an act of betrayal. Throughout the book, Hamlet develops a plan of revenge for the death of his father, the king.
The rest of the soliloquy is about what is agonizing to him: his mother's marriage. She married less than two months after the death of Old Hamlet. And while Hamlet's father was "Hyperion," a sun-god, King Claudius is another kind of mythical creature, a "satyr," an oversexed half-goat.
Gertrude describes her love for Hamlet when she asks him not to return to Wittenberg. When she shares with Ophelia her hope that the young woman would have married her Hamlet, she divulges her wish for his happiness.
After the death of her husband, Queen Gertrude quickly marries Claudius, her late husband's brother. She demonstrates that she never did truly love her husband, but rather that she only wanted to remain in her powerful position and have a male figure to depend on.
Gertrude is Hamlet's mother and Queen of Denmark. She was married to the murdered King Hamlet (represented by the Ghost in the play) and has subsequently wed Claudius, his brother. Her close relationships to the central male characters mean that she is a key figure within the narrative.
Laertes must have been clued in to Ophelia's pregnancy. Polonius inadvertently admits to such a claim. Polonius's knowledge is revealed when Hamlet discloses that he knows Ophelia, his lady love might be pregnant. Check out the words that Hamlet uses when he confronts Polonious.
In Laurence Olivier's film adaptation of Hamlet, Gertrude drinks knowingly, presumably to save her son from certain death. If she drinks on purpose, then she's the self-sacrificing mother Hamlet has always wanted her to be.
(See "Connection to Hamlet and other plays" below for a discussion about Hamnet's potential relationship to his father's tragedy, Hamlet.) Hamnet Shakespeare was probably raised principally by his mother Anne in the Henley Street house belonging to his grandfather.
In the movie, Ophelia does not die. Instead, after realizing that Hamlet's quest for revenge against King Claudius could prove hazardous to her own health — and deducing that she is pregnant with Hamlet's baby — Ophelia fakes her drowning death.
Hamlet delays killing Claudius because Claudius represents Hamlet's innermost desires to sleep with his mother Gertrude.
During "The Closet scene", Hamlet and his mother kiss.
Ophelia is Polonius' daughter and Laertes' sister. Hamlet has been in love with her for a while before the play starts and has given her several gifts during their courtship until her father warns her away from him and tells her not to see him anymore.
But other interpretations, in both stage productions and paintings, suggest Gertrude's guilty knowledge of the murder, and Hamlet suspects her as well as Claudius; Hamlet's "mousetrap" therefore sets out to capture the conscience of a king and a queen.
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.
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.
He urges her as well not to reveal to Claudius that his madness has been an act. Gertrude, still shaken from Hamlet's furious condemnation of her, agrees to keep his secret.
Gertrude dies on-stage, accidentally poisoned by Claudius. Laertes dies on-stage, stabbed by his own poisoned blade.
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.
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.
Gertrude and Ophelia Relationship
Gertrude makes it apparent that she carries a fondness for Ophelia.
Hamlet shows throughout the play that he is really in love with Ophelia. One piece of evidence showing that Hamlet really did love Ophelia is when he tells her, “I did love you” (Act 3 scene 1 line 126). Hamlet confesses that he truly loved her, but then goes back on his word and says he never loved.