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.
How did Gertrude know the cup was poisoned? 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.
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.
To ensure Hamlet's death, Claudius also has a poisoned cup of wine should Hamlet win the duel. Claudius does not intervene when Gertrude drinks the poisoned cup of wine because he does not want to give himself away.
Claudius assures Gertrude that, "Our son shall win." Gertrude agrees. She takes Hamlet's wine, wipes his brow, and offers him a drink, which he refuses. She then toasts her son. Claudius asks her not to drink, but she does and then wipes Hamlet's brow one more time.
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.
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.
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. Meanwhile, Laertes wounds Hamlet with the poisoned blade, and the two continue to scuffle, somehow switching swords in the process.
In the final scene of Hamlet, Gertrude, Laertes, and Hamlet all die as a result of poisoning. Gertrude drinks from the poisoned cup intended for Hamlet, while Hamlet and Laertes both wound one another with the poisoned sword.
In Gertrude's room, Polonius hides behind a tapestry. Hamlet's entrance so alarms Gertrude that she cries out for help.
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.
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 ...
Gertrude dies on-stage, accidentally poisoned by Claudius. Laertes dies on-stage, stabbed by his own poisoned blade.
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.
She refuses to see the Ghost because of her own guilt.
Other scholars, like Pragati Das in “Shakespeare's Representation of Women in his Tragedies,” agree that Gertrude is not murderous, but simply selfish, shallow, and addicted to pleasure.
Ophelia's Death
Perhaps the most tragic death in "Hamlet" is one the audience doesn't witness. Ophelia's death is reported by Gertrude: Hamlet's would-be bride falls from a tree and drowns in a brook. Whether or not her death was a suicide is the subject of much debate among Shakespearean scholars.
Hamlet sees the Queen fall and anxiously asks, "How does the Queen?" The King assures him that she is faint because of the blood, but Gertrude cries out that the drink has poisoned her.
Hamlet and Ophelia are the two characters in Hamlet who are involved with suicide, although Hamlet only contemplates it, but Ophelia actually commits suicide. Throughout the play, the act of suicide is treat religiously, morally and aesthetically.
The final Act, in which she is clearly aware that the wine is poisoned, sees her sacrifice herself to save Hamlet.
Hamlet is appalled at the revelation that his father has been murdered, and the ghost tells him that as he slept in his garden, a villain poured poison into his ear—the very villain who now wears his crown, Claudius.
Queen Gertrude
In the finale of Act 5, Scene 2, Gertrude drinks the poisoned wine that Claudius had intended for Hamlet. There is a moment when Claudius could have stopped her, but his plot to kill Hamlet would have been revealed. Claudius lets Gertrude drink the wine, thus killing her.
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.
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.
He urges her as well not to reveal to Claudius that his madness has been an act. Gertrude, still shaken from Hamlet's furious condemnation of her, agrees to keep his secret.