The Character of Hamlet's Mother

In the previous chapters, we discussed the significance of characters in Shakespeare’s plays, and
looked into some of the possible approaches to interpreting (Shakespeare’s) characters. The
characters of Antony and Cleopatra occupy center stage, as the title protagonists, but Hamlet’s
mother, Gertrude, does not. In forgoing Hamlet, we forgo not just the title character, but probably
the best-known character in the history of literature as well. Of course, the character of Hamlet
must be invoked in order to analyze any character in the play, as they are all mediated through
their relationship with Hamlet. And then again, this approach (not directly discussing the character
of Hamlet) will allow us to see how Shakespeare’s genius works on ‘lesser’ characters, and weaves
webs of their relationships, as well as to see how changes in the modern critical climate allowed
new perspectives of Shakespeare’s texts. In this case, we are primarily looking into one small bit
of the contribution made by the feminist criticism, which can be described as “Be kind to Gertrude"
as the famous critic Harold Bloom (Bloom, 57) once did.
Bearing in mind some of the basic strategies As an aside: the word “hamlet” means “village”
of character-interpreting we used when we in English. However, if you look into it, you will
tackled Antony and Cleopatra, we can invoke find several competing etymologies for the name
other texts, especially those used by of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, including one that
Shakespeare as sources. The story of Hamlet claims the name to be coming from Scandinavian
probably comes from old Danish historian (Old Norse) name “Amleth”, which probably
called Saxo Gramaticus, which was very meant “mad”.
freely and copiously translated into French
around 1570 by François de Belleforest. Looking at the Belleforest version, one important pre-
feminist scholar (Heilbrun, 325) noted that in this “original”, Hamlet’s mother was the daughter
of the king, by whose marriage elder Hamlet gained his throne; this further meant Claudius became
king by marrying her, too; furthermore, without her remarriage, there would have been a form of
elections in which the new king would have been appointed. So, what does this tell us about the
character of Gertrude? For one, that Gertrude, by remarrying, also made sure to pick the king by
herself: Hamlet feels that Claudius robbed him of his hope (of the throne) but Gertrude, it seems,
did not rely on hope alone. Second, though she is given little text, and, though she may be a “lesser”
character, she is absolutely vital for the play’s action: there is no Hamlet without her. Another
thing to take away from this source text, is how this newly discovered significance of Gertrude
nuances the motivations of other characters, especially Claudius and Hamlet, whose attitudes to
Gertrude may have been significantly influenced by this “backstory”. In turn, this warns us against
taking other characters’ (for example Hamlet’s) judgements of Gertrude for granted, not just on
principle, but because there may be very concrete interests twisting their views!
Looking at Shakespeare’s own works, Gertrude is certainly not the only married queen in his plays.
She is not exactly young (she is, roughly, 45), she has a new husband following the death of the
previous one, who was also an important ruler, and the new relationship is causing all the stir. This
makes her comparable to Cleopatra (who was the wife of Julius Caesar before she became the wife
of Mark Antony). In fact, some scholars (Levin, 174) have also captured the parallel in terms of
the sexual appetites of the two queens: remember how Cleopatra is described as “making hungry
where she most satisfies”? And, here is Hamlet, brooding on his mother’s
appetite for her deceased husband:
Why, she should hang on him
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on As another aside, there
are texts of much later
It is this image of insatiability, of growing hungrier with every new ‘meal’,
date, using the
that Shakespeare may have been returning to when constructing his Cleopatra
character of Gertrude
(despite the order in this book, Hamlet predates Antony and Cleopatra, of
deliberately, calling
course). But, it seems to me, the comparison with Cleopatra does little to shed
attention to
additional light on Gertrude’s lust. If anything, the idea of Gertrude’s
“Shakespeare’s
‘lustfulness’, sexual appetite, etc., fades significantly when set against the
vigor of Cleopatra, her seductions of messengers, etc. original”, counting on
the reader’s ability to
Looking at the text of Hamlet itself, Gertrude can be seen as having not one, detect this. This kind of
but two foils (foil is a term that we sometimes use to describe a character that fiction, sometimes
represents a contrast or a background on which another character is made referred to as
more discernable, more defined, recognizable and therefore memorable: metafiction, picks up a
Laertes and Fortinbras are Hamlet’s foils, for example, just as Octavia is a foil marginal figure in a
to Cleopatra). One is Ophelia, young, unmarried, virginal, idealized; the other well-known story and
is the Player Queen in the play that Hamlet stages to test the reaction of makes this person
Claudius and Gertrude to a play about. central, developing his
or her story and
On first glance, Ophelia underlines Gertrude as ‘not virginal’, profligate, showing it in a very
lustful, and lustful at the age unfitting for such passions (whore – saint, different light.
opposition, in other words, made more emphatic by reversed ages). But if we Margaret Atwood, for
examine the way in which Hamlet addresses and treats Ophelia, we might not example, wrote
discover any great difference: consider, for example (and it is not the only “Gertrude Talks Back”,
example, not by a long shot), this dialogue between the two, taking place in in which Gertrude
public, while they are surrounded with people: addresses Hamlet and
starts by saying how
Hamlet: Lady, shall I lie in your lap? [openly alludes to having sex] she disliked his name
Ophelia: No, my lord. (“It was your father’s
Hamlet: I mean, my head upon your lap. idea… kids at school
Ophelia: Ay, my lord.
used to tease the life
Hamlet: Do you think I meant country matters? [country – crudely sexual]
out of you… I wanted
Ophelia: I think nothing, my lord.
to call you George”). In
Hamlet: That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs.
this short text,
Ophelia: What is, my lord? [what refers to that’s]
Hamlet: “Nothing.” Atwood’s Gertrude
finishes with: “It
The final ‘nothing is a fair thought to lie between maid’s legs’ probably means wasn’t Claudius,
something like ‘it would be great if it weren’t so, but there is rarely nothing darling. It was me”.
between maids’ legs, but almost always a ‘thing’, which accuses all women,
including young maids, of insatiable sexual appetites. On the other hand,
‘nothing’ was a crude pun on ‘vagina’ (women do not have ‘the thing’, they
have the ‘no thing’), which makes possible a slightly different interpretation, but nevertheless an
interpretation which shows that Hamlet does not really make much distinction between Ophelia as
innocent and Gertrude as sinful: he treats them with the same emphasis on sex, and with the same
bitter cynicism. What this means is, again, that Hamlet’s descriptions of his mother’s ‘lust’ must
be nuanced by these parallels: when he protests, in relation to her “rank sweat of an enseamed bed
… and making love / Over the nasty sty” he speaks of himself as much as of his mother.

Player Queen is construed by Hamlet as not a contrast, but a mirror to his mother: she promises
she will never marry another man after her husband dies, but betrays the promise, just as, in
Hamlet’s view, Gertrude did. Here is Player Queen: “In second husband let me be accurst; /
None wed the second but who killed the first. And again: “A second time I kill my husband dead,
When second husband kisses me in bed.” But, again, Hamlet’s intention, subjectively, falls flat
when confronted by Gertrude’s reaction: when Hamlet asks her what she thought of the play she
says, to the point, and marvelously holding her ground “The Lady protests too much” (meaning,
the Player Queen makes unrealistic promises). Her concise, to the point, brave speech shows in
several places, for example (Hailbrun, 321) when she guesses at once the reason for Hamlet’s
madness (“no other but the main: His father's death and our o'erhasty marriage”). Her calm also
indicates that she had nothing to do with the murder, as critics almost unanimously agree (well,
Atwood teases differently in her short text, ‘sidebarred’ above, but this is done fictionally,
mockingly).

The other main mediator of Gertrude’s character, also male, also negatively biased towards
Gertrude, is the Ghost, Hamlet senior. This is not to be unsympathetic to Hamlets (they did suffer
great losses). Even when putting this bias aside, one can derive little concrete ‘evidence against
Gertrude’ from what the (negatively biased) characters have to say about her. Yes, she married her
husband’s brother just months after her husband’s death, but so did an English queen (try to find
out which one, she was not just any queen either). She did not participate in the murder, it seems,
and it is not easy to show her as adulterous (cheating on her first husband before he was murdered).
Bloom (59) says he could “assume that Gertrude required some solace whenever the warlike King
Hamlet was off” on wars, but Bloom offers no textual evidence of this.

Previously, criticism has focused on the Ghost saying “Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast”
referring to Claudius and therefore implicating Gertrude into the supposed adultery. But, the
meaning of adulterous, for one thing, used to be broader than today: in Elizabethan times
(Hailbrun, 324) “the word adulterate was used to define any sexual relationship that could be called
unchaste”, and not strictly one involving ‘cheating’. But even if one should accept the word in its
modern meaning, the Ghost is speaking from the position of still existing. In other words, as still
existing, he naturally considers himself still married, and therefore considers the new marriage as
‘cheating’, adulterate, without necessarily implying adultery while he was still alive.
 Bare bone summary

• Awareness of Hamlet’s mother • Hamlet’s treatment of Ophelia

from his sources, boosts
understanding of her significance
• Only superficially, or verbally
comparable to Cleopatra
• Two foils: supposedly contrasting
Ophelia and supposedly mirroring
Player Queen
undermines trust in his
judgement of Gertrude
• Where Gertrude speaks on her
own, she is concise, to the pont
and brave
• Ghost’s ‘adulterate’ is unclear

References:

Carolyn Heilbrun, The Character of Hamlet’s Mother, in Hamlet: Bloom’s Shakespeare through
the Ages, edited by H. Bloom, 2008 [1957] 318-325.

Richard Levin, Gertrude’s Elusive Libido and Shakespeare’s Unreliable Narrators, in: William
Shakespeare’s Hamlet: Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations, edited by H. Bloom, 2009, 173-
192.

Harold Bloom, Hamlet, Poem Unlimited, Riverhead Books (Penguin Putnam Inc.), New York,
2003.