Maclise portrays an innocent Gertrude who apparently has no inkling of Claudius's guilt or even of the murder itself.
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.
Instead, Gertrude's love for Claudius creates a thrilling twist to the closet scene in which he is revealed as a murderer. The final Act, in which she is clearly aware that the wine is poisoned, sees her sacrifice herself to save Hamlet. This is the tragic pinnacle of the production, and shapes its remaining moments.
All scholars seem to agree on one point: Gertrude does not mean harm, but still causes harm to those around her. Orah Rosenblatt in her Gertrude in Hamlet, Critical Analysis Essays, says “Gertrude is a woman who means no harm but whose poor judgment contributes greatly to the terrible events that occur.”
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.
Her lack of action and judgment prove her culpable for the eventual deaths of Laertes, Hamlet, and herself, and possibly the deaths of Polonius and Ophelia. One of her greatest and earliest mistakes was marrying Claudius without regard to Hamlet's feelings.
The King, the King to blame,” (V, II, 350-351): not only the poison killed Gertrude but his illogical plan caused the entire royal family to die. Claudius's own plan killed him because of his paranoid mind, which caused him to make thoughtless…
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.
Although Gertrude has many good qualities, she's not conspicuously intelligent. Moreover - fatally - she is a poor judge of character. Misogyny, or a prejudice against women, influences how others perceive Gertrude in the play and has influenced interpretations of Hamlet.
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.
Hamlet's obsession with his mother's sexuality seems to be the chief way that he relates to Gertrude, whose character is so opaque and difficult to judge that Hamlet and the audience are forced to come to their own conclusions about her.
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.
He interrupts her and says that she has offended his father, meaning the dead King Hamlet, by marrying Claudius. Hamlet accosts her with an almost violent intensity and declares his intention to make her fully aware of the profundity of her sin. Fearing for her life, Gertrude cries out.
In Act 3, Scene 4, Hamlet is accusing Gertrude of betrayal and incest. He is angrier and rasher. He kills Polonius in his madness, thinking he is Claudius.
He is upset because she married his late father's brother Claudius. Hamlet thinks that remarriage in such circumstances is unacceptable. Through Hamlet's disappointment with his mother, his anger is increased towards Claudius.
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.
tragic flaw was no other than the innocent desire for reconcilement and her too human need to avoid conflict.
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.
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.
At the end of the play in Act 5, Scene 2, Hamlet dies when he is stabbed with the poisoned sword. While Laertes stabbed Hamlet, it was Claudius who poisoned the sword. Claudius plotted with Laertes to revenge the murder of Polonius and the death of Ophelia but really wanted Hamlet dead so he could continue to be king.
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.
At the moment, although Claudius says “Gertrude, do not drinke.” but she drinks with these words, “I will my Lord, I pray you pardon me”.
Gertrude admits her heart has been split in two by Hamlet's words. He encourages her to discard the worse half, seek forgiveness, and distance herself from Claudius.