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.
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.
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.
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.
The fight turns more violent and Hamlet mortally wounds Laertes in return. Gertrude succumbs to the poisoned wine and dies. Hamlet forces Claudius to drink the poisoned wine, killing him as well.
During the match, Claudius conspires with Laertes to kill Hamlet. They plan that Hamlet will die either on a poisoned rapier or with poisoned wine. The plans go awry when Gertrude unwittingly drinks from the poisoned cup and dies. Then both Laertes and Hamlet are wounded by the poisoned blade, and Laertes dies.
Claudius adds yet another safeguard: He will poison a goblet of wine for Hamlet to drink, so that even if Laertes fails to draw blood, Hamlet will die.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Because if his worst suspicions are true, then Mom (Gertrude) gave Claudius legitimacy by marrying him. By marrying Claudius, her brother-in-law, she was implicitly throwing her support behind him.
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.
Claudius manipulated Hamlet by convincing Laertes to duel him a poisoned battle. He provided a poisoned cup with which Gertrude drank to her death. Claudius manipulated Gertrude to death, and with loving manipulation to her son.
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.
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.
She married less than two months after the death of Old Hamlet.
Gertrude dies on-stage, accidentally poisoned by Claudius. Laertes dies on-stage, stabbed by his own poisoned blade.
Gertrude's betrayal of her son was caused by Claudius, as he comforted her after her husband's unfortunate demise, and later married her, this was betrayal to Hamlet because he had a very high opinion of his father and thought very little of his uncle, Hamlet said “-married with my uncle, / My father's brother, but no ...
tragic flaw was no other than the innocent desire for reconcilement and her too human need to avoid conflict.
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 the final scene of Hamlet, King Claudius drops a large pearl into his cup of wine before drinking a toast to the prince. The ritual of toasting the prince's health is ironic, of course, but in a very sincere death ritual that follows, Gertrude and Claudius drink from a poisoned chalice and die.
Hamlet, in a fury, runs Claudius through with the poisoned sword and forces him to drink down the rest of the poisoned wine. Claudius dies crying out for help.