gertrude

Hamlet- Shakespeare

Gertrude, Queen of Denmark, isn’t very easily categorized as good or evil. Should she be thrown in with Claudius as wife of the enemy of the protagonist? Or should she be placed alongside Hamlet as the last of the protagonist’s family?

Hamlet himself seems to be torn by the issue, but he clearly separates his mother from Claudius. While he ignores Claudius’s requests, he specifically mentions that he will do his best to obey his mother. Not only does this display Hamlet’s distaste for Claudius, but it shows Hamlet’s view of his mother as different from Claudius. Although he looks down on Claudius to the point of refusing his requests, he does allow himself to follow his mother’s requests. However, despite a certain level of kindness towards his mother, Hamlet definitely seems to favor labeling her as evil, especially after his talk with the ghost of his father. Even before he heard of the possibility of his mother’s infidelity, he calls his mother little more than a “beast” considering her speedy remarriage. This quick recovery from her husband’s death does bring up some questions. Was Gertrude having an affair before King Hamlet died? Is she on Claudius’s side of the whole conflict? She does seem more than willing to forget about King Hamlet, telling her son to “cast thy nighted color off” less than two months after his father died, treating his death as “common” and nothing to make a fuss about. Considering this was the woman that used to “hang” on the King as if addicted to him, the change in loyalties does seem disconcerting.

Even the King’s ghost’s testimony seems to work against the queen, calling her a “seeming-virtuous queen,” implying that the virtue that is normally attributed to her is nothing more than a façade. However, the King also seems reluctant to place full blame on the Queen. The one he identifies as “traitorous” is Claudius and not his wife, and the King specifies that Claudius “seduced” the queen, seeming to take all the blame off of the queen and place it in Claudius. He turns the queen from guilty to victimized. He even makes sure that the queen will not get caught up in the revenge plot by instructing Hamlet to never “let [his] soul contrive/against [his] mother.” The anger that the King hold for the queen seems too little for a reaction to an affair. Rather, the King seems to be upset with the Queen’s current relationship with his brother, but does not blame her. Following this view, Gertrude could simply be concerned about the state and her son after her husband’s death and therefore decided to take responsibility by becoming queen and encouraging her son to move on. However, it could also be true that the Queen really did have an affair, but the King can’t bear to blame her out of love (as Hamlet said, the King was “so loving to my mother/that he might not beteem the winds of heaven/visit her face too roughly”).

So, in the end, Gertrude is still not clearly good or bad. However, following Hamlet’s reaction to her and Claudius’s requests and the King’s reluctance to blame her, the Queen is clearly not to be grouped together with Claudius in terms of enmity. She’s escaped being categorized as completely evil, and now she sits somewhere in the ambiguity around good.