Gertrude is Hamlet's mother and Queen of Denmark. She was married to the murdered King Hamlet (represented by the Ghost in the play) and has subsequently wed Claudius, his brother.
Hamlet intimidates Gertrude, and she cries out that he is trying to murder her. Polonius reacts from behind the curtain and yells for help.
Hamlet delays killing Claudius because Claudius represents Hamlet's innermost desires to sleep with his mother Gertrude.
Hamlet urges her to “throw away the worser part of it,” repent, stay away from Claudius, and “throw [the devil] out” of her life. He begs her not to let Claudius “tempt [her] again to bed”—or get her to tell him anything about what has transpired between Hamlet and Gertrude tonight.
Gertrude describes her love for Hamlet when she asks him not to return to Wittenberg. When she shares with Ophelia her hope that the young woman would have married her Hamlet, she divulges her wish for his happiness.
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.
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.
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 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.
Hamlet speaks to the apparition, but Gertrude is unable to see it and believes him to be mad.
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.
Through her relationship with her son Hamlet, Shakespeare paints a picture of betrayal. Gertrude marries the brother of Hamlet's father and this why Hamlet is upset with his mother.
Hamlet loved his mother and wanted to forgive her, but he planned to revenge his uncle who practically ruined his family. Hamlet loved his mother without feeling he was betraying his father. He loved her as a son, although she remarried very soon after his father's death.
In William Shakespeare's play Hamlet, Gertrude is Hamlet's mother and Queen of Denmark. Her relationship with Hamlet is somewhat turbulent, since he resents her marrying her husband's brother Claudius after he murdered the king (young Hamlet's father, King Hamlet).
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.
Gertrude dies on-stage, accidentally poisoned by Claudius. Laertes dies on-stage, stabbed by his own poisoned blade.
In this passage Gertrude swears on her life to keep Hamlet's sanity a secret, and to keep her own knowledge of her first husband's murder a secret from her second husband – his murderer.
Gertrude, The Queen of Denmark, is responsible for Ophelia's death. By looking at Gertrude's over protective relationship with Hamlet, her lack of initiative on the situations around her in a time of tragedy, as well as her vivid account of Ophelia's death, evidence that…show more content…
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.
First of all, why does Gertrude take up a drink? Of course she does not know that the cup is poisoned, at all. She says, "The Queene carowses to thy fortune Hamlet."
Do Queen Gertrude's loyalties appear to lie with King Claudius or Prince Hamlet? It's hard to tell, but it appears that they lie with King Claudius. She immediately tells him about Hamlet's murder of Polonius. However, he also calls him mad and doesn't betray that Hamlet told her he was only pretending to be mad.
tragic flaw was no other than the innocent desire for reconcilement and her too human need to avoid conflict.
O my dear Hamlet! The drink, the drink! I am poison'd. [Dies.]
In Gertrude's room, Polonius hides behind a tapestry. Hamlet's entrance so alarms Gertrude that she cries out for help.
She refuses to see the Ghost because of her own guilt.