Gertrude of Shakespeare’s Hamlet Essay -- Character of Gertrude

The Gertrude of Shakespeares Ham allow Is Gertrude, in the Shakespearean drama juncture, a bore? A killers accomplice? The perfect queen? A dummy? This paper will answer many questions concerning Claudius partner on the Danish throne. In her essay, Acts III and IV Problems of Text and Staging, Ruth Nevo explains how the heros negative outlook toward Gertrude influences his attitude toward Ophelia Whereas it is precisely his total inability to agnise her Ophelia, or for that matter himself, that the scene, in this theatrically simpler view, would allow us to perceive as the center of his anguish. He is tormented precisely by doubts, not by confirmations. And how indeed should he know what Ophelia is? Is she loving and faithful to him despite parental authority? Or compliant to the latter and therefore false to him? What has she been told about him? Is he not testing her with his hyperbolic declaration I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious with more offenses at my back than I h ave thoughts to put them in, caprice to give them shape, or time to act them in? His mother has predisposed him to believe in womens perfidy, has produced in him a revulsion from enkindle and the stratagems of sex he was unable to draw Ophelias face by his perusal she has refused his letters and denied him access now returns his gifts. What form of devious double-dealing shall he transport? (49-50) At the outset of the tragedy Hamlet appears dressed in solemn black. His mother, Gertrude, is apparently disturbed by this and requests of him Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off, And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark. Do not for ever with thy vailed... ...loom. New York Chelsea House Publishers, 1986. Rpt. from Tragic Form in Shakespeare. N.p. Princeton University Press, 1972. Pitt, Angela. Women in Shakespeares Tragedies. Readings on The Tragedies. Ed. Clarice Swisher. San Diego Greenhaven Press, 1996. Excerpted from Shakespeares Women. N.p. n.p., 1981. Shakes peare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 1995. http//www.chemicool.com/Shakespeare/hamlet/full.html Smith, Rebecca. Gertrude Scheming Adulteress or Loving Mother? Readings on Hamlet. Ed. Don Nardo. San Diego Greenhaven Press, 1999. Rpt. of Hamlet A Users Guide. New York Limelight Editions, 1996. Wilkie, Brian and James Hurt. Shakespeare. Literature of the Western World. Ed. Brian Wilkie and James Hurt. New York Macmillan Publishing Co., 1992.