Though her character can be seen as passive for the first part of the play, it is in Act 5, Scene 2 that she fully realises her dramatic potential. She wilfully disobeys Claudius by drinking the poisoned wine.
Poison is used as a weapon throughout this play. Old Hamlet, the King of Denmark, is poisoned by his brother, Claudius. Claudius uses the poison for his own selfish ambition and marries Old Hamlet's widow, Gertrude, making him the new King of Denmark.
Gertrude unwittingly drinks the poisoned wine intended for Hamlet. During the duel Laertes scratches Hamlet's leg, infecting him with the poison. The fight turns more violent and Hamlet mortally wounds Laertes in return. Gertrude succumbs to the poisoned wine and dies.
Gertrude is just a mother, trying to protect his son from being hurt. In the final scene of the play, Gertrude drinks the poisoned wine that Claudius has prepared for Hamlet. Even though Claudius tells Gertrude not to drink, Gertrude does it for his son.
She has a suspicion which is confirmed by the panic in Claudius' line "Gertrude, do not drink." She would figure out that there's poison in the cup and drink it anyway. She's discovered his treachery and doesn't want to be a part of it.
Maclise portrays an innocent Gertrude who apparently has no inkling of Claudius's guilt or even of the murder itself.
After her first husband is murdered, the new king decides to take her as his bride. Even if she was emotionally opposed to the pairing, Gertrude, a woman and royal only by marriage, would have almost no authority to reject the marriage to Claudius. Yet Hamlet still places the blame entirely upon Gertrude.
It follows Gertrude from her wedding to King Hamlet, through an affair with Claudius, and its murderous results, until the very beginning of the play.
When Claudius offers Hamlet the poisoned goblet of wine, Hamlet refuses, and Gertrude picks up the cup instead. Toasting Hamlet, she drinks the poison, ensuring her eventual death.
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.
The last words Hamlet speaks are to his friend Horatio: "The rest is silence." These words were crucial to audiences at the time because they provided a sense of ease in death and the afterlife. Hearing that Hamlet could now rest in peace for avenging his father's death meant he was no longer suffering.
Interestingly, Hamlet never expresses a sense of guilt over Ophelia's death, which he indirectly caused through his murder of Polonius.
Hamlet strikes Laertes but declines to drink from the cup, saying that he will play another hit first. He hits Laertes again, and Gertrude rises to drink from the cup. The king tells her not to drink, but she does so anyway.
Putting Gertrude, The Queen in total deception was the kind of manipulation Claudius used to get closer to his power. As a strategic move to help him seize the throne away from Hamlet after the death of the King, he decided to marry Gertrude.
In the play Hamlet, Symbolism is explicitly evident as poison represents the deceit,betrayal and corruption.An example of a character that takes part in deceit is king Claudius. King Claudius lies and deceives his wife, Gertrude, and the citizens of Denmark.
Their feelings about grief
Gertrude Lines 68-73 Gertrude tells Hamlet that he should no longer wear black mourning clothes and that he should look happier. She tells him he should not keep his eye downward as if he were looking for his father in the dirt. She reminds him that all people must die.
Laertes /leɪˈɜːrtiːz/ is a character in William Shakespeare's play Hamlet. Laertes is the son of Polonius and the brother of Ophelia. In the final scene, he mortally stabs Hamlet with a poison-tipped sword to avenge the deaths of his father and sister, for which he blamed Hamlet.
Hamlet does not drink the poison in the final duel. However, he kills Laertes with a poisoned blade as soon as he discovers the plot.
Gertrude realizes that the wine she drank was poisoned when she begins to die, and Laertes reveals that Claudius is behind all of the poison.
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.
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.
In Sigmund Freud's concept, which Shakespeare was familiar with, it is proposed in Hamlet that he and his mother kiss because Hamlet no longer wants to allow his mother to sleep with Claudius.
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.
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.
In the play, the Player Queen believes it would be betrayal to marry someone else. However, in real life, Queen Gertrude at once marries Claudius and this shows that she didn't love him and that she had a dependency on men because they would keep her safe.