Character Analysis of Gertrude in Hamlet
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Queen Gertrude’s “o’erhasty marriage” (2.2) to Claudius descends into a nightmare and ends in a “feast” of “Death” (5.2) bloodbath that destroys her entire family.
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Essay introduction /
Thesis statement
“All that is I see”
“Have you eyes?”, Prince Hamlet demands of his mother, Queen Gertrude (3.4). The relationship between the widow of Old King Hamlet and her former brother-in-law Claudius is a tragic tale of opportunistic self-delusion colluding with murderous ambition.
Queen Gertrude’s character flaw is her deliberate blindness to what she must surely suspect: that her second husband Claudius is, in her son’s words, a “murderer and villain” (3.4). Others in the play put on acts of ‘seeming’ to conceal their true selves. Gertrude fools only one person—herself.
In the end, Queen Gertrude loses her life to her second husband’s villainy and her throne to Norway’s Young Fortinbras, the son of the man her first husband murdered on the day her own son Prince Hamlet was born.
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#Hamlet's Queen Gertrude - Her 'happily ever after' descends into a nightmare.
1
Gertrude’s second wedding
“Taken to wife”
With Old King Hamlet dead, and she lacking any interest in or capacity for governing, the position of Gertrude as Denmark’s queen was now in jeopardy.
It must have seemed to Gertrude that accepting the proposal of marriage from her former brother-in-law Claudius held out the attractive prospect of continuing to live and enjoy the only life she had known for thirty years.
The answer to the question asked of her by Hamlet (“What devil was᾿t / That thus hath cozened you at hoodman-blind?”, 3.4) was Gertrude’s desire to continue by means of a second marriage the privileged status she had through her first: the role of queen, “the beauteous majesty of Denmark” (4.5).
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#Hamlet - a marriage of evil (Claudius) and self-deluding naivety (Gertrude).
2
Gertrude and Claudius
“I shall obey you”
One of the play’s great ironies is that the person most continually accused by Prince Hamlet of fickle disloyalty—“Frailty thy name is woman” (1.2)—is, in fact, the most loyal character of all. Up until the very last scene, she remains steadfastly at the side of the man she married.
When in 4.5 an angry, castle-storming mob shouts out “Laertes shall be king!”, Gertrude responds unhesitatingly with: “O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs!” She boldly confronts the sword-wielding Laertes when she fears for the king’s safety and defends him from any part in Polonius’ death (“But not by him”).
These are not the actions of a merely decorous trophy wife but of a woman who fulfills Claudius’ description of her as the “imperial jointress to this warlike state” (1.2).
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"Frailty"? Queen Gertrude is in fact the most loyal character in #Hamlet.
3
Gertrude and Prince Hamlet
“Why seems it so particular with thee?”
Queen Gertrude is a person who seeks to smooth over everything without thinking too deeply; her son is a questioning scholar who cannot but think deeply about everything.
Hamlet delights in wordplay. She is direct in her speech and is the only character to tell the bombastic Polonius to come to the point—“More matter, less art” (2.2).
Prince Hamlet’s ranting against “bloat king” in the closet scene of 3.4 produces a rare moment of self-awareness in Gertrude: “Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul.” But Hamlet’s conversation with the Ghost, who is visible only to him, diminishes her son’s credibility in Gertrude’s eyes—“Alas, he’s mad!”
It must seem to Gertrude that she has gained a new husband and retained her crown at the cost of losing her son to insanity.
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Prince #Hamlet to his mother, Queen Gertrude: "Have you eyes?"
4
Gertrude and Ophelia
“Your good beauties”
We do not know if Gertrude follows Hamlet’s direction to shun her husband’s bed: “Assume a virtue if you have it not” (3.4). But the evolving nature of her relationship with Polonius’ daughter suggests that something inside her has changed.
Gertrude’s words to Ophelia in 2.1 of her hopes that “That your good beauties be the happy cause / Of Hamlet’s wildness” are those of someone with a romantic even simple-minded view of life. But when confronted in 4.5 with Ophelia’s madness, Gertrude speaks of the “guilt” in her “sick soul.”
I suspect that when the traumatized Ophelia offers her a symbolic gift of rue—a plant associated with sadness and regret—Gertrude was already reflecting ruefully on all the calamity and unhappiness has followed from her remarriage.
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#Hamlet - Over Ophelia's grave, Gertrude sees her future slipping away from her.
5
Essay conclusion / Summary
“I am poisoned”
Nowhere is the “hoodman-blind” (3.4) naivety of the “all that is I see” (3.4) queen more pathetically evident than in the final scene.
She is to be unknowing witness to the assassination of her son disguised as a sporting duel between Laertes and Hamlet—a “brother’s wager” preceded by a display of reconciliatory “gentle entertainment” (5.2).
Ultimately, Gertrude falls victim to the same poison that her second husband used to murder her first.
At the play’s beginning, it was the offer of marriage from Claudius that enabled her to continue as queen on Denmark’s throne. But at the end, Gertrude is literally dethroned when she collapses to the floor as a result of drinking from the tainted wine goblet the same Claudius intended for her son.
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#Hamlet's Queen Gertrude - She sees the truth about her husband when it is too late.
6
The most helpful book ever for students and teachers of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
42 x 1,500-word model essays
Chapter-by-chapter guide to Hamlet Model Essays
IN THIS BOOK ARE THREE 1,500-WORD SAMPLE ESSAYS ON EACH ONE OF THE FOLLOWING 14 CHARACTERS, RELATIONSHIPS, AND THEMES. THAT’S 42 SAMPLE ESSAYS IN TOTAL.
#1: The Character of Hamlet
Born a prince, parented by a jester, haunted by a ghost, destined to be killed for killing a king, and remembered as the title character of a play he did not want to be in. If at the cost of his life, Hamlet does in the end “win at the odds.”
#2: The Character of Claudius
His “ambition” for Denmark’s crown leads him to commit one murder only to find that he must plot a second to cover up the first. When this plan fails, his next scheme leads to the death of the woman he loves followed by his own.
#3: The Character of Gertrude
“Have you eyes?”, Prince Hamlet demands of his mother. Gertrude‘s “o’erhasty marriage” dooms her life and the lives of everyone around her when her wished-for, happy-ever-after fairytale ends in a bloodbath.
#4: The Character of Ophelia
As she struggles to respond to the self-serving purposes of others, Ophelia’s sanity collapses in Elsinore’s “unweeded garden” of falsity and betrayal. Her “self-slaughter” is her revenge for her silencing and humiliation.
#5: Relationship of Hamlet and the Ghost
Hamlet grants the Ghost the atonement his suffering soul needed more than the revenge he demanded: he surrenders Denmark to the son of the man murdered by his father on the day of the prince’s birth.
#6: Relationship of Hamlet and Claudius
Uncle and nephew are two men at war with each other—and themselves. Claudius is haunted by the murder he has committed (“O heavy burden!”); Hamlet by the one he hasn’t yet (“Am I a coward?”).
#7: Relationship of Hamlet and Gertrude
A haunted-by-the-past Hamlet seeks the truth about his father’s death (“Do you see nothing there?”). A live-in-the-present Gertrude seeks to protect her second husband and crown (“No, nothing but ourselves”).
#8: Relationship of Hamlet and Ophelia
Their relationship begins in uncertainty, descends into mutual deceit and rejection, and ends with their double surrender to death: Ophelia, to the water; Hamlet, to Claudius’ rigged fencing duel.
#9: Relationship of Hamlet and Horatio
“Those friends thou hast … Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel.” Horatio is Hamlet’s trusted confidant in life and vows to remain the keeper of his memory after the prince’s death.
#10: Relationship of Claudius and Gertrude
A marriage of mutual self-interest: Claudius wanted to become king; Gertrude wanted to remain queen. In the end, both die by the same poison her second husband used to murder her first.
#11: Main Themes of Hamlet
A king murdered, an inheritance stolen, a family divided: Elsinore’s older generation destroys its younger when two brothers—one living, one undead—battle in a “cursed spite” over a crown and a queen.
#12: The Theme of Revenge
Hamlet and Laertes journey from revenge, through obsession and anger, to forgiveness. And the revenge sought by the Ghost on King Claudius becomes the revenge of Old King Fortinbras on Old King Hamlet.
#13: Deception and Appearance versus Reality
“Who’s there?” The characters struggle to distinguish between truth and falsehood in a play-long triple pun on the verb ‘to act’: to take action, to behave deceitfully, and to perform in theater.
#14: The Theme of Madness
“Your noble son is mad”, Polonius tells Denmark’s king and queen. But is Hamlet ever really insane? If not, why is he pretending to be? And is the prince’s “antic disposition” the cause of Ophelia’s traumatic breakdown?