Introduction to Gertrude in Hamlet

Introduction to Gertrude in Hamlet

Gertrude is, more so than any other character in the play, the antithesis of her son, Hamlet. Hamlet is a scholar and a philosopher, searching for life's most elusive answers. He cares nothing for this "mortal coil" and the vices to which man has become slave. Gertrude is shallow, and thinks only about her body and external pleasures. Like a child she longs to be delighted. We do not see much of her in daily activity, but if we could we would see a woman enraptured by trinkets and fine clothes, soft pillows and warm baths. Gertrude is also a very sexual being, and it is her sexuality that turns Hamlet so violently against her. The Ghost gives Hamlet, who is already disgusted with his mother for marrying his uncle such a short time after his father's death, even more disturbing information about the Queen: Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast, With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts,-O wicked wit, and gifts that have the power So to seduce!--won to his shameful lust The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen. (I.V.42-5) Many critics misread the line "adulterate beast" as proof that Gerturde had been the lover of Claudius even before Hamlet's father had died. This would make the Queen a far more loathsome character than Shakespeare had intended, and the rest of the play makes no mention of this adultery. Adulterate, by definition, means to change to a worse state by mixing; to contaminate with base matter. And Claudius has indeed, according to the Ghost, contaminated his precious Gertrude, but this does not mean that Claudius did so before Hamlet's father died.

If Gertrude were an adulteress, she would have been almost certainly been involved in Claudius' plot of murder, and therefore she would be the play's villainess and not its child-like victim. Claudius would believe her to be an accomplice and confide in her, but he does not. Moreover, if it were true, it most surely would be foremost on Hamlet's mind, but when Hamlet confronts Gertrude in her closet and announces all her crimes, he does not

once even imply that she has committed adultery. And, as Olav Lokse points out in his book Outrageous Fortune: [The scholar J.W. Draper] also draws attention to the Ghost's complaint that he was "Of life, of crown, of queen at once dispatch'd" (I.v.75), which is echoed by Claudius's "My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen", in III, iii, 55, which may be taken to indicate the sequence in which the preplay events had occurred. (82) That Gertrude has an aversion to the truth is not in dispute. She lies to herself about the consequences of her actions, and she lies to those around her. But she lies to protect. Hers are not cruel and wicked falsehoods; hers are white lies that she feels she must tell in order to keep her and those around her safe physically and emotionally. She must tell the King that Hamlet has killed Polonius, but, she does what she can to help Hamlet, telling Claudius that Hamlet "weeps for what is done" when clearly he does not.

On the surface it is hard to comprehend why Hamlet, his father, and Claudius all have such a deep devotion to Gertrude. But the qualities that save her from condemnation along with Claudius are subtly woven into the play. She loves Hamlet, and, underneath her shallow exterior, shows great emotion when he confronts her. Gertrude truly does not know what she has done to make Hamlet so furious, and it is only when he tells her that she understands her actions to be wrong: O Hamlet, speak no more: Thou turn'st my very eyes into my soul, And there I see such black and grained spots As will not leave their tinct (III.iv.88-91) ...O speak to me no more; these words like daggars enter my ears; No more, sweet Hamlet! (III.iv.94-6) There is no reason to believe that Gertrude is lying to appease Hamlet in the above lines. No where else in the play is Gertrude portrayed as cunning or Janus-faced, as is 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. We see she has the potential for great

love -- she wants to protect Claudius from the mob, and she cares deeply about Ophelia and Polonius, and is concerned for Hamlet in the duel even though she has no idea that it is a trap. It is Gertrude's underlying propensity for goodness that redeems her. Her men forgive her for her shallow, sensual nature and her addictions to comfort and pleasure because they see that she is innocent of premeditation. It is sad but fitting that Gertrude meet her end drinking from the poisoned goblet, demanding that she taste what is in the pretty cup, as trusting as a new-born babe. http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/hamlet/gertrudecharacter.html At the beginning of Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, Hamlet is distraught about two things: his father's untimely death and his mother's untimely marriage. Gertrude's role in this play, either as complicit or innocent in the murder of her husband, is one which prompts great debate, as does the nature of her relationship with Hamlet. Many of the things that she says and does in the play are a matter of interpretation.

In the first scene Hamlet and Gertrude have together, she suspects he might possibly be upset by her "o'erhasty marriage," but she also wants him to stop mourning so dramatically--perhaps because it makes her feel a bit guilty. While he does not yet know that Claudius murdered King Hamlet, Hamlet knows that his father was a far superior man to Claudius; he says they are like Hyperion (one of the Titans) and a satyr (lecherous half-man and half-goat). Hamlet is clearly upset with her choice of husband, but he is also furious with her for being weak ("Frailty, they name is woman!") and marrying someone so quickly after seeming, at least, to love her husband so dearly. Instead of drawing them closer, King Hamlet's death has created an obvious rift between them, as Hamlet says, "But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue."

As the play progresses, Hamlet seems to have enacted his plan to put on an "antic disposition," and Gertrude is worried again that her hasty marriage to Claudius may be the cause; Claudius fears that Hamlet knows the truth but does not share that with Gertrude. When Polonius proposes his plan to send Ophelia as bait to Hamlet so they can listen to their conversation, Gertrude eagerly agrees. This does not seem like the action of a caring mother, though she may actually just be desperate to know what is really causing her son's madness.

When she calls Hamlet to her chamber, Gertrude's plan is to be stern with him and find out what is wrong. Instead, Hamlet is rather ruthless in his condemnation of her choice in husbands and soon Gertrude is asking what she can do to make it right. In the middle of this exchange, however, the

Ghost makes his appearance, and only Hamlet can see or hear it. Perhaps Gertrude admits her failing because she thinks she is to blame for Hamlet's apparent madness or to appease her son in his madness.

In any case, she agrees not to tell Claudius that Hamlet is only "mad in craft"; as soon as she sees Claudius, she tells him that Hamlet killed Polonius and is

Mad as the sea and wind, when both contend

Which is the mightier....

Whether she was breaking her promise or helping Hamlet continue his charade is a matter of interpretation--has Gertrude now allied herself with Claudius or Hamlet?

In the final scene, things seem good between mother and son, and for once Gertrude does not listen to her husband when he tells her not to drink. Though this small act eventually kills her, it does suggest that perhaps Gertrude has allied herself more with Hamlet than with her second husband.

The relationship between Gertrude and Hamlet is complicated, and it is difficult to know the truth because of Hamlet's emotional state (grief, anger, perhaps madness) and Gertrude's possible dissembling about her husband's murder and her relationship with Claudius. While the relationship ends in destruction, it may not be the fault of the relationship but the outside forces at play in this tragedy. http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/700-word-essay-analyzerelationship-between-445960 Shakespeare created an interesting problem for himself with the character of Gertrude. As a dramatist, he needed to nourish the conflict between his characters in order to keep the heat and pressure up to the point where the action was ready to explode at any moment. At the same time, he created a character that sits in the middle of the conflict, and seems intent in defusing it at every turn. That character is Gertrude. She is both mother and peacemaker in a blended family that has just come into an unstable existence. When we first see her, she takes on the unofficial task of

reconciling her new husband’s enthusiasm for his recent alliance with her son’s apparent mourning for his recently deceased father. One assumes that Claudius’ announcement in that scene that Hamlet is next in line for succession to the throne comes about as one of the terms of the agreement that created the alliance. It is certainly an expression of Claudius’ willingness to honor his new wife’s affection for her son.

Gertrude is thoughtful and sensitive in her attempts to intervene. She is not simply an unwitting victim of her circumstance, as some critics would have it.

Gertrude is wholly ignorant of Caludius' successful plot against her first husband and equally oblivious of Hamlet's protectively possessive feelings towards her. She finds his melancholic behaviour exasperating, and is unable to understand why he will not rejoice with the rest of the court at her marriage. She seems a kindly, slowwitted, rather self-indulgent woman, in no way the emotional or intellectual equal of her son. When Hamlet finally determines to make her see the ghastly error of her choice his cruelly-chosen words force her to feel guilty:

O Hamlet, speak no more. Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul, And there I see such balck and grained spots As will not leave their tinct. (III,iv.88-91) ... He begs her not to sleep with Claudius again, but although she promises not to tell anyone what he has said, she avoids giving a direct answer. It may be that Gertrude is attempting a practical compromise: she wants to calm Hamlet but cannot bring herself to swear to something she will not be able to do. No clue as to her subsequent sexual relationship with Caludius is given. - Angela Pitt, Shakespeare's Women, David and Charles, London, l981. p. 58f.

What sabotages Gertrude’s attempts to contain the conflict between Claudius and Hamlet is the fact that she is not entirely in the know. Claudius is not entirely forthcoming to Gertrude as a result of his deceit, whereas Hamlet is taciturn. The dramatic irony that increases the poignancy of her position has to do with the fact that we are continuously aware of covert actions against Hamlet that Claudius has kept from Gertrude: the intention to have the English execute Hamlet upon his

arrival there, the baiting of Laertes’ foil with poison, etc. It is, in fact, one of these covert actions (as usual kept from Gertrude) that causes her undoing. In effect, Gertrude does not know what she has married, and the gradual realization provides one way to chart her trajectory through the action of the play. To begin with, there is the fact of Claudius’ role in her former husband’s demise. While it appears clear that Gertrude was not involved in the murder of the former king, the issue still seems to generate discussion. In particular, some argue that this was not Shakespeare’s original intention and that he waffles on the question.

One feels tempted to suppose that, when he wrote the ghost scene, Shakespeare meant her to have connived at least at her husband's death; that he afterwards changed his mind and thought of her as guilty only of adultery -- perhaps not even that; and that he failed to reconcile the two ideas on the final acting version of the play. - G.F.Bradby, The Problems of "Hamlet, Haskell House, N.Y., 1965. p.21 Early feminist critics such as Linda Bamber argue that Gertrude's involvement in the death of the former King Hamlet is not really at issue at all. She focuses on Hamlet's fascination with what he imagines to be his mother's sex life.

Gertrude's innocence or guilt is not really an issue in the play. She, like Cleopatra, is a character of ambiguous morality whom we can never fully know; but whereas Antony and Cleopatra continually invites our judgment of Cleopatra, Hamlet continually deflects our impulse to judge Gertrude. First of all, we have no firsthand evidence. Although Hamlet sees his mother as a disgustingly sensual creature, the relationship that we see between Gertrude and Claudius is domestic and ceremonial, never sexual at all... The Gertrude that we see -- as opposed to the one that Hamlet imagines -- is her son's mother and a worried, affectionate partner to her husband, who happens to be going through a period of political danger. Linda Bamber, Comic Women, Tragic Men, Stanford Univ. Press., Stanford, 1982. p.75 For interpreters such as Professor Bamber what is not included in the text does not exist. Directors, however, do not have that preoperative. Questions of the unseen have to be resolved for a performer to express the full humanity of their character. We can see this, for example, from the opening moments of Franco Zeffirelli's 1990 film version of Hamlet. In the burial scene, which he interposes at the beginning of the film, Franco Zeffirelli seeds suspicions of a preexisting affair between Gertrude and Claudius through an interplay of furtive glances between Gertrude, Claudius and Hamlet -- an interplay which continues throughout the first half of the production. Hamlet's statements regarding the haste with which

the marriage follows the funeral are here dramatized by the fact that Zeffirelli cuts directly from the funeral scene to the announcement of the wedding.

Franco Zeffirelli stages the shots which contain both Gertrude and Caludius (Glenn Close and Alan Bates) in such a way that Gertrude always appears to be looking over Claudius' shoulder. The viewer's surmise is that she is looking for Hamlet; trying to assess where she and Claudius stand in relationship to her son. This stresses Gertrude's role throughout as a mother who is trying to reconfigure her family around her new husband. She tries to pull Hamlet in and to smooth over any rupture that might exist. It also becomes Gertrude's role to paint the verbal portrait of Ophelia's death and to deliver an elegy for her. Sweets to the sweet! Farewell. [Scatters flowers.] I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife. I thought thy bride bed to have decked, sweet maid, And not have strewed thy grave. It is cynical to doubt the sincerity of her feelings for Ophelia. The two of them seem assigned to the role of safeguarding the feminine heritage of the play, and with the loss of her potential daughter-in-law, that heritage is sadly terminated. Zeffirelli's Gertrude is clearly a peacemaker. In an early sequence, Franco Zeffirelli has Gertrude abruptly leave off kissing Claudius to go look for Hamlet (to Claudius' evident dismay) and then leave off kissing Hamlet to go join Claudius (also to Hamlet's dismay).

This interplay continues in the film until the closet scene (Act III, scene iv). The change that takes place after that scene can be interpreted as suggesting that Gertrude takes Hamlet's stern message to heart.

A lot rests on the director's view of Gertrude's sexuality. For Linda Bamber, the focus is on Hamlet's assumed fascination with Gertrude's sexual behavior (which she refers to as "sex nausea"). In order to hilite his pornographic imagination, it is essential that his view be incorrect. Director Tony Richardson, however, presents a Gertrude who justifies Hamlet's portrayal of the relationship. He even goes so far as to have Claudius and Gertrude (Judy Parfitt and Anthony Hopkins) conducting matters of state from their bed. Richardson seems to give credence to Hamlet's accusations:

Nay, but to live In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love Over the nasty sty.... (III.iv.92-95) Hamlet does not survive on the back of the relationsip between Gertrude and Claudius, but the nature of that relationship is a functional contributor to the marvelous complexity of the play. In the closet scene, Hamlet implores Gertrude to discontinue sexual relations with Claudius. Her response to his urgings would then color her (and Claudius') behavior for the rest of the play. In some productions (Laurence Olivier's, for example), it is clearly the case that Gertrude has headed Hamlet's plea and has rejected Claudius' affections. The strain that this puts on their marriage is visible in the subsequent scenes and contributes to the growing dramatic pressure of the play.

Gertrude's demise offers directors a final chance to bring her internal drama to full resolution. Both Laurence Oliver and Michael Almereydra (1999) seize this opportunity by having Gertrude recognize that the drink that kills her is poisoned prior to her consuming it. In a startling act of defiance, she challenges Claudius by giving him a chance to admit to his duplicity, and when he fails to do so, she commits an act which is sure to expose his covert actions against Hamlet. Her willful suicide also dramatizes the fact that she has failed in her role as peacemaker - not through her own doing, but because Claudius has sabotaged the entire process. In effect, the duplicity of which she has become aware, has also undermined her purpose in the drama, and made her very existence problematic.

A century after Sigmund Freud, the psychoanalytic critic, Jacques Lacan talks about another form of repression which affects Gertrude as well as Hamlet. This is the repression of the process of mourning.

From one end of Hamlet to the other, all anyone talks about is mourning.

Mourning is what makes the marriage of Hamlet's mother so scandalous. In her eagerness to know the cause of her beloved son's "distemper," she herself says: "I doubt it is no other but the main,/ His father's death and our o'erhasty marriage."...

Nor can we fail to be struck by the fact that in all the instances of mourning in Hamlet, one element is always present: the rites have been cut short and performed in secret.

For political reasons, Polonius is buried secretly, without ceremony, posthaste. And you remember the whole business of Ophelia's burial. There is the discussion of how it is that Ophelia, having most probably committed suicide -- this is at least the common belief -- still is buried on Christian ground. ... - Jacques Lacan, "Desire and the Interpretation of Desire in Hamlet," in Shoshana Felman, Literature and Psychoanalysis, Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, 1982. pp.38ff. The Freudian assumption (for Oedipus Rex as well as for Hamlet) is that the repression of mourning has a psychological effect which will eventually find expression.

What I have just said about mourning in Hamlet must not obscure the fact that at the bottom of this mourning, in Hamlet as in Oedipus, there is crime. Up to a certain point, the whole rapid succession, one instance of mourning after another, can be seen as consequences of the initial crime. It is in this sense that Hamlet is an Oedipal drama, one that we can read as a second Oedipus Rex and locate at the same functional level in the genealogy of tragedy. This is also what put Freud, and his disciples after him, onto the importance of Hamlet. - Jacques Lacan,. p.41f. Throughout the drama, Gertrude is constantly there, attempting to maintain the home base. From even before the drama starts, her sorrows

come, "not single spies but in battalions," and one by one, she is forced to repress her grief in favor of maintaining an appropriate front. Contrary to diminishing the likelihood of a collapse of the established order, this sequence of events increases it. It becomes certain that this edifice will crumble at some time to reveal the emptiness behind it. Each grief is denied its appropriate response in favor of political necessity. The human cost is considerable. http://elsinore.ucsc.edu/women/womenGertrude.html Introduction to Gertrude in Hamlet

Gertrude is, more so than any other character in the play, the antithesis of her son, Hamlet. Hamlet is a scholar and a philosopher, searching for life's most elusive answers. He cares nothing for this "mortal coil" and the vices to which man has become slave. Gertrude is shallow, and thinks only about her body and external pleasures. Like a child she longs to be delighted. We do not see much of her in daily activity, but if we could we would see a woman enraptured by trinkets and fine clothes, soft pillows and warm baths. Gertrude is also a very sexual being, and it is her sexuality that turns Hamlet so violently against her. The Ghost gives Hamlet, who is already disgusted with his mother for marrying his uncle such a short time after his father's death, even more disturbing information about the Queen: Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast, With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts,-O wicked wit, and gifts that have the power So to seduce!--won to his shameful lust The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen. (I.V.42-5) Many critics misread the line "adulterate beast" as proof that Gerturde had been the lover of Claudius even before Hamlet's father had died. This would make the Queen a far more loathsome character than Shakespeare had intended, and the rest of the play makes no mention of this adultery. Adulterate, by definition, means to change to a worse state by mixing; to contaminate with base matter. And Claudius has indeed, according to the Ghost, contaminated his precious Gertrude, but this does not mean that Claudius did so before Hamlet's father died.

If Gertrude were an adulteress, she would have been almost certainly been involved in Claudius' plot of murder, and therefore she would be the play's villainess and not its child-like victim. Claudius would believe her to be an accomplice and confide in her, but he does not. Moreover, if it were true, it most surely would be foremost on Hamlet's mind, but when Hamlet confronts Gertrude in her closet and announces all her crimes, he does not once even imply that she has committed adultery. And, as Olav Lokse points out in his book Outrageous Fortune: [The scholar J.W. Draper] also draws attention to the Ghost's complaint that he was "Of life, of crown, of queen at once dispatch'd" (I.v.75), which is echoed by Claudius's "My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen", in III, iii, 55, which may be taken to indicate the sequence in which the preplay events had occurred. (82) That Gertrude has an aversion to the truth is not in dispute. She lies to herself about the consequences of her actions, and she lies to those around her. But she lies to protect. Hers are not cruel and wicked falsehoods; hers are white lies that she feels she must tell in order to keep her and those around her safe physically and emotionally. She must tell the King that Hamlet has killed Polonius, but, she does what she can to help Hamlet, telling Claudius that Hamlet "weeps for what is done" when clearly he does not.

On the surface it is hard to comprehend why Hamlet, his father, and Claudius all have such a deep devotion to Gertrude. But the qualities that save her from condemnation along with Claudius are subtly woven into the play. She loves Hamlet, and, underneath her shallow exterior, shows great emotion when he confronts her. Gertrude truly does not know what she has done to make Hamlet so furious, and it is only when he tells her that she understands her actions to be wrong: O Hamlet, speak no more: Thou turn'st my very eyes into my soul, And there I see such black and grained spots As will not leave their tinct (III.iv.88-91) ...O speak to me no more; these words like daggars enter my ears; No more, sweet Hamlet! (III.iv.94-6)

There is no reason to believe that Gertrude is lying to appease Hamlet in the above lines. No where else in the play is Gertrude portrayed as cunning or Janus-faced, as is 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. We see she has the potential for great love -- she wants to protect Claudius from the mob, and she cares deeply about Ophelia and Polonius, and is concerned for Hamlet in the duel even though she has no idea that it is a trap. It is Gertrude's underlying propensity for goodness that redeems her. Her men forgive her for her shallow, sensual nature and her addictions to comfort and pleasure because they see that she is innocent of premeditation. It is sad but fitting that Gertrude meet her end drinking from the poisoned goblet, demanding that she taste what is in the pretty cup, as trusting as a new-born babe. http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/hamlet/gertrudecharacter.html