How Does Gertrude Change Throughout The Play

In the play Hamlet, Gertrude, also known as Prince Hamlet’s mother and wife of the deceased King Hamlet, was oblivious to the fact that her current husband, King Claudius, killed her first husband. Gertrude remarried to King Claudius two months after her first husband passed away, solely to fill the seat of the throne, so that Prince Hamlet could one day inherit it, as well as fill the emptiness of her heart Thus explaining why Gertrude would remarry so instantaneously. Aside from quickly remarrying because one is a woman, we can be assured that Gertrude is oblivious to the decease of King Hamlet because of her shocking reaction to her son’s remark when in Act 3, Scene 4 Prince Hamlet accuses Gertrude of his father’s murder. Her reaction is “What have I done, that thou dar’st wag thy tongue in noise so rude against me?” (Shakespeare 3.4.40-41) If Gertrude would have been involved in King Hamlet’s murder, then she would not have asked such a question in such a shocking manner. Throughout the play in Act 3, Scene 4, Gertrude makes another shocking reaction when she says to Hamlet after he kills Polonius “Oh, what a rash and bloody deed is this!”(Shakespeare 3.4.28) Hamlet responds with “A bloody

We know that she loved him because of when she tells Hamlet “Be thou assured, if words be made of breath and breath of life, I have no life to breathe what thou hast said to me.”(Shakespeare 3.4.197-199) In this reference, Gertrude is making a sacrificial promise to her son in means of keeping secrets from her new love to help find out how her first husband died. By sacrificing her new love for her old, this proves her true love for Hamlet. She makes this sacrifice to her son because if she would tell King Claudius that Hamlet was in search of him, he would know that Hamlet was aware of the murder of his father for the throne. Consequently, he would be scared of Hamlet’s potential aggressive