In William Shakespeare's tragic play Hamlet, the audience can view Gertrude as innocent or guilty of various crimes. However, Shakespeare uses Gertrude's ignorance, symbols, and her actions to portray her as innocent.
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.
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.
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.
However, Shakespeare uses Gertrude's ignorance, symbols, and her actions to portray her as innocent. Gertrude condones spying on Hamlet and marries her husband's murderer, but she has no idea that Claudius killed King Hamlet and agrees that they must watch Hamlet closely because she is worried about him.
Even the ghost of King Hamlet himself did not implicate Gertrude in the murder, but only asked Hamlet to “leave her to heaven and the pangs of her own conscience.” Queen Gertrude's lack of action and critical thinking prove her guilty not of King Hamlet's death, but indirectly guilty of each subsequent death within the ...
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.
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.
She is affectionate, often showing her care and concern for Hamlet as well as a fondness for Ophelia. Gertrude is not given much autonomy in Hamlet, but makes two major decisions: She marries Claudius, and she drinks the poisoned cup of wine.
In her relationship with Claudius, Gertrude is driven by her sexual needs, which is the physical representation of her inner corruption. His mother's betrayal leads him to believe that all women are disloyal and dishonest to their husbands. This portrayal of women to Hamlet completely changes his opinions on women.
Gertrude and Ophelia live in a patriarchal society and are considered to be frail and weak-minded. This enables their being manipulated and exploited. Soon after the death of her husband, Gertrude is seduced into marrying her brother-in-law, Claudius, an act that earns the anger of her son, Hamlet.
Gertrude's Loyalty to Hamlet
Despite all that happens, Gertrude chooses to remain loyal to Hamlet. At the end of act three, he reveals to Gertrude that he is only mad in craft, not for real, and he askes her not to sleep with Claudius anymore.
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. However, she never declares any kind of emotion for Claudius, either positive or negative.
Hamlet delays killing Claudius because Claudius represents Hamlet's innermost desires to sleep with his mother Gertrude.
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.
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.
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.
O my dear Hamlet! The drink, the drink! I am poison'd. [Dies.]
Gertrude dies on-stage, accidentally poisoned by Claudius. Laertes dies on-stage, stabbed by his own poisoned blade.
In Gertrude's room, Polonius hides behind a tapestry. Hamlet's entrance so alarms Gertrude that she cries out for help.
She wilfully disobeys Claudius by drinking the poisoned wine. She dies with cries of 'the drink! the drink! I am poisoned' (5.2. 264), and in so doing identifies Claudius as her killer.
Do Queen Gertrude's loyalties appear to lie with King Claudius or Prince Hamlet? It's hard to tell. but it appears that they lie with King Claudius. She immediately tells him about Hamlet's murder of Polonius.
It is not the statement of a dull, slothful woman who can only echo her husband's words” (Heilbrun 12). With this statement, Gertrude tells the audience that this tragedy comes from her actions. She confirms that her presence ignites the tragedy that occurs in Denmark.
Manipulation exists throughout Hamlet from the prince acting mad to Claudius killing Gertrude. Claudius manipulated Hamlet by convincing Laertes to duel him a poisoned battle. He provided a poisoned cup with which Gertrude drank to her death.