Gertrude as Recipient & Source of Gifts: (Part 9) Labors of Gratitude and Regret in Hamlet
This is an installment in a multi-part series examining how characters interact in Hamlet, offering opportunities, gifts, planting seeds for future inspiration, or for changes of heart & mind. It follows ideas from Lewis Hyde (“The Labor of Gratitude,” a chapter in his book, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property). For more notes on the series and an index of previous posts in this series, see the end of this post.
[Clockwise from upper left:
Glenn Close as Gertrude, 1990 (with Mel Gibson as Hamlet), directed by Franco Zeffirelli;
Eileen Herlie as Gertrude, 1948 (with Lawrence Olivier as Hamlet), directed by Laurence Olivier (Herlie also played Gertrude in the 1964 production of Hamlet starring Richard Burton, directed by Bill Colleran & John Gielgud);
Diane Venora as Gertrude, 2000 (with Ethan Hawke as Hamlet), directed by Michael Almereyda;
Julie Christie as Gertrude, 1996 (with Kenneth Branagh as Hamlet), directed by Kenneth Branagh.]
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Gertrude as Recipient & Giver of Gifts: Labors of Gratitude & Regret in Hamlet, part 9
I had planned to continue with “Laertes’ Labors of Gratitude & Regret in Hamlet 5.2” this week, but it became increasingly clear to me how, in 5.2, what happens with Laertes is very contingent on developments with Gertrude, and what she does is contingent on her previous openness to the words and actions of Hamlet and Ophelia. So as multiple contingencies converge, every character depends even more on the previous words and actions of every other character.
The joke about oversimplifying statements observes that there are two kinds of people: Those who say there are two kinds of people, and everyone else. I will risk an oversimplifying statement: There are at least two approaches to Gertrude in 5.2: One claims she drinks from the cup because she can’t resist her own hungers or passions. Another claims she suspects there is poison and drinks to test the cup of wine before Hamlet drinks.
A Traditional View: Gertrude as a Slave to her Passions & as Whore of Babylon
In the older, more traditional view of some scholars, Gertrude is basically unchanged as a character by the end of the play and drinks the cup because she cannot help but give in to her urges, like her willingness to commit adultery with Claudius and enter into an incestuous marriage. This is consistent with the view of some scholars (such as David Kaula) that Claudius represents Satan, and Gertrude, the Whore of Bablylon, a cypher for the Catholic church in the eyes (perhaps especially) of some Protestant scholars.
In this interpretation, Gertrude drinks from the cup on an impulse, happy and distracted that Hamlet has made an overture of reconciliation toward Laertes, and toward Claudius in accepting his wager. She ignores Claudius' requests for her not to drink because she's a queen, swept up in the moment, used to getting her way, and is then surprised to find that the cup has been poisoned. This would view her as a somewhat static character, mostly unchanged from alleged adulterer, in spite of her discussion in her closet with her son, and her feelings of guilt upon seeing Ophelia in 4.5, and her eloquent account of Ophelia's death.
But in fact, we never see her make a choice like this in any other context in the play, except perhaps defying tradition and marrying her dead husband's brother. The text never refers to her habits of drinking (as it does Claudius), nor does it refer to her disobeying her new husband. To interpret Gertrude as unsuspicious and simply surprised to be poisoned doesn't seem consistent with the other choices we see her make in the play.
A More Dynamic, Interacting, Evolving Gertrude with Greater Agency
In another interpretation, demonstrated by veteran Hamlet actress Diane Venora in the Ethan Hawke film version of Hamlet (as well as by Penny Downie in the 2009 film directed by Gregory Doran, with David Tennant as Hamlet), Gertrude clearly suspects poison and drinks from the cup intentionally with that in mind. This interpretation might be especially supported if we pay attention to her previous encounters with other characters, encounters that offer her criticism and/or opportunities by way of ideas or inspiration, and therefore might be viewed as gifts offered to her, or even as Providence using others around her as embodiments of grace.
What might support this kind of interpretation?
Gertrude's Interactions with Hamlet & Ophelia Move Her Toward Growth
Gertrude is at first reluctant, then accepting, both of Hamlet’s scolding in the closet scene, and of a mad Ophelia she'd rather not speak to. She goes from resisting Hamlet's condemnations of her actions in marrying Claudius, to acknowledging certain unnamed inner spots on her soul, or guilt, and agreeing to keep Hamlet's secret from Claudius. She goes from having no desire to encounter Ophelia, to speaking to her, to giving an account of her death that seems to absolve Ophelia from suicide and blame accidents (a broken, "envious" sliver of a branch) for her death. The envious sliver of which she speaks, and for which she blames Ophelia's fall into the brook, may be a careful and figurative way of speaking about her new husband and his envy of his brother's crown and wife, which she learned about from her son in his "Mousetrap" play and from her son's scolding in her clost. Gertrude in these ways is evolving, regretful, increasingly sympathetic, and perhaps prepared to preempt Hamlet in drinking from the cup, testing it for her son's safety. If so, she is a linchpin for the end of the play.
Hamlet Encourages Gertrude to Turn From Sin (and Avoid his Father's Fate)
In acts 1.4 and 1.5, Hamlet encounters and later speaks with the ghost who tells him of how he died in a state of sin, and of the horrors of what seems to be purgatory:
GHOST
I am thy father's spirit,
Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood.
—Hamlet was deeply affected by this encounter with the ghost, who tells him,
...Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
Against thy mother aught: leave her to heaven
And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge,
To prick and sting her.
Hamlet disobeys his father on this point and seems to want to help her to repent of sin, to avoid a fate like his father’s. In 3.2, he says of his upcoming meeting with his mother,
“I will speak daggers to her, but use none”.
In 3.4, after stabbing the unseen Polonius, thinking it is Claudius, he tells her, “I must be cruel, only to be kind.”
She seems to be moved by what he says:
GERTRUDE:
O Hamlet, speak no more:
Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul;
And there I see such black and grained spots
As will not leave their tinct.
Some scholars have speculated that the ghost enters in this scene to stop Hamlet from urging his mother to repent of her sin, and to comfort her instead, because perhaps the ghost IS the devil in disguise and wishes for Gertrude to be damned. But it’s too late, and Gertrude does feel guilty.
Gertrude Displays Her Guilt Again and Witnesses Ophelia's Gifts
In Act 4, scene 5, Gertrude at first refuses to speak to Ophelia who seems to have gone mad, but is convinced by Horatio that it would be wiser to at least try. But before Ophelia enters, Gertrude observes,
To my sick soul, as sin's true nature is,
Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss:
So full of artless jealousy is guilt,
It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.
So in other words, for the first time in the play, because of her discussion with her son in her closet, she now speaks of having a sick and sinful soul, and to be guilty of sin. She might be thinking of having a life-makeover, or at least a soul-makeover, repenting somehow of her sins (which, again, are not named).
[Glenn Close as Gertrude, and Helena Bonham Carter as Ophelia, 1990, directed by Franco Zeffirelli.]
Like others, Gertrude witnesses Ophelia’s madness, hears her words, and watches as Ophelia either gives out, or pretends to give out, flowers as gifts, each with a meaning. Gertrude listens as Ophelia, in song, blames men for promising their love to women, but then being unfaithful. This echoes Hamlet’s warning to Ophelia in the nunnery scene, when Hamlet said “We are arrant knaves,
all; believe none of us.”
If Gertrude is paying attention to Ophelia’s song, Gertrude would do well to think of how Hamlet may be right, and Claudius may have deceived her, like the woman in the song, to gain the throne. This may be an opportunity, or gift of grace, that Ophelia’s song offers to Gertrude. In fact, Claudius promised love to Gertrude, but he will not save her from the poison cup; he'd rather save his own life and reputation first. In that way, Claudius is unfaithful, and Ophelia's song later applies to Claudius as well as Hamlet.
Gertrude's Account of Ophelia's Death: Not Suicide
Later, in Act 4, scene 7, it is Gertrude who delivers the sad news of Ophelia’s death to Laertes and Claudius:
GERTRUDE
There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.
Gertrude’s account of the drowning is not of a suicide. Instead, she blames the "envious" tree branch (which is bearing Ophelia’s weight, but which breaks because she is not hanging as many flowers on it as on other branches). Again, this crown-envy for the sliver of willow is similar to her new husband's crown envy.
Gertrude also blames the garments, “heavy with their drink,” for pulling Ophelia down to her death. (Hamlet describes Claudius as having drinking habits that make him, too, "heavy with drink.") But above all, Gertrude does not blame Ophelia.
For Ophelia’s part, in Gertrude's account (which may be fictional), she seems unafraid, or incapable of fear:
“she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress”.
If Gertrude's account is truthful (and not just a merciful fiction), Ophelia seems at peace with God, cast into the water by a broken branch, accepting of her own possible impending death, and the old tunes she is singing are old religious songs. To her Gertrude tell give this kind of account may be a gift to the listeners.
Or, if in fact this is a merciful fiction woven by Gertrude, then it is how Gertrude would like us to imagine Ophelia's death, so that we imagine her saved by faith, and allow her a Christian burial. This account, too, even if it is fiction, would be a kind of gift.
This is all a mystery whose heart we could never fully pluck, but we can ponder and respect the possibilities.
More Gifts from Ophelia's Last Moments
So we might observe that in Gertrude’s mind (or her merciful fiction), she is processing Ophelia’s death as something other than suicide, and noticing especially Ophelia’s fearlessness in the face of her possible death. Witnessing these things may plant ideas in Gertrude's mind, that if it came down to it, Gertrude need not commit suicide in despair, but might make her own death meaningful in some way, not fearing the risk of her own death, learning from Ophelia's example.
Or if this is fiction, perhaps Gertrude is using the occasion of Ophelia's death as a gift, to prompt Gertrude herself to consider how to transform her own possible death
Whether Gertrude gives a true account or a fictional one, this is still a Gertrude who is a recipient of a gift by learning and then conveying the news of Ophelia's death. And this process of Gertrude receiving the news and then conveying it is a transformative one for Gertrude.
If she can be transformed by this, then something of Ophelia might live on in Gertrude, in a manner perhaps not dissimilar from the Christian idea of the "communion of the saints," where living Christians pray and commune with the souls of the dead in eternal life with God, or the idea that the body of Christ is made up of many mutually dependent parts in communion with one another.
If we wish to view Gertrude as a dynamic character who changes for the better, we might observe that she takes to heart not only Hamlet’s scolding of her for her sinfulness and the news that Claudius is a murderer, but also Ophelia’s song about unfaithful men, and Ophelia's example of courage in the face of death. These prepare Gertrude to drink from the cup.
Or in religious language, we might note that Hamlet and Ophelia have, in their own different ways, planted seeds of grace in Gertrude.
What is Gertrude Thinking?
In drinking from the cup (5.2), Gertrude doesn’t know for sure whether there is poison or not. So she may be thinking:
—If I drink from the cup before Hamlet, and if there is *no* poison, which I suspect as a possibility, then perhaps Claudius is not so bad as Hamlet believed at the height of his madness, and perhaps Hamlet, who apologized to Laertes, will get along better with his uncle in the future. All may still be well?
—But if there *is* poison in the cup, then I would rather test it for my son and die in doing so, perhaps buying him some time, instead of remaining alive and married to Claudius, who by the poison would prove himself to be a monster.
In Gertrude's closet (3.4), Gertrude had told her son, "O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain." Hamlet replies,
O, throw away the worser part of it,
And live the purer with the other half.
As I have noted in a previous blog post, Hamlet is alluding to scripture:
The Fearlessness of Ophelia & Gertrude in the Face of Death
I have written before in a previous blog post of how the play toys with the themes of love and fear, and of the scriptural observation that, in love there can be no fear, for fear is driven out by the perfection of love.
We can't say for sure what is going through the mind of Ophelia as she goes to her watery death, or the mind of Gertrude as she drinks from the poison cup. But at least one possibility for Ophelia is that when she says in 4.5 that it was the "false steward" who "stole his master's daughter," she might recognize that her brother and father were "false stewards" to suggest to her that she was unworthy of a match with Hamlet. If Ophelia's true father is a transcendent God (as for all who pray the "Our Father"), she is worthy of any match. This idea is perhaps underscored in part by Hamlet's joke after "The Mousetrap," when he speaks of what a remarkable son he must be to so [a-]'stonish his mother, alluding to the gospel tale of the boy Jesus, lost in Jerusalem, found in the temple, amazing the elders and his parents.
If Ophelia and Gertrude are being perfected in love and grace, it's possible that fear of death is being driven from their minds and helping to motivate what may seem to be more selfless choices. This, of course, is a mystery we cannot pluck in any final sense, but it's a possibility. And it also echoes Hamlet's fearlessness in the face of death: "Let be," and "The readiness is all." And perhaps it is consistent with Laertes' perfection in love as he repents of his mistakes and shares forgiveness with Hamlet.
Multiple Contingencies
If Gertrude doesn’t make her choice to drink the cup, then this may change many other things in the last scene: The death of Gertrude is one essential element that finally helps convince Laertes to repent of his plans for revenge, and to reveal to Hamlet, “The King’s to blame.”
So Hamlet (3.4) and Ophelia (4.5, 4.7) help Gertrude consider repentance and courage;
Gertrude helps Ophelia (4.7) by viewing her death as something other than suicide;
Gertrude helps Hamlet (5.2) by drinking the cup first and revealing the poison;
Gertrude helps Laertes repent of revenge by dying first and exposing Claudius;
Laertes then helps Hamlet;
Hamlet kills (executes?) Claudius.
Hamlet & Laertes exchange forgiveness;
Hamlet offers a gift of reparation to Fortinbras.
If Hamlet & Ophelia had not helped Gertrude, and if Gertrude had not been open to their help, Laertes may simply have obtained revenge by killing Hamlet, Claudius may have remained on the throne when Fortinbras arrived, and war between Denmark and Norway may have broken out after Fortinbras attempts to claim his “rights of memory,” resulting in perhaps thousands more deaths than we already have in the play.
So in this way, all the characters who receive and give various kinds of grace to one another are woven together in labors of repentance and gratitude. But in the end, Claudius stands alone: Claudius persistently refuses offered moments of grace and the option of repentance, so he is excluded from the relationships of gifts and the grace they might confer.
Bonus gifts from Gertrude:
Gertrude offers other gifts to Laertes, Hamlet, and Ophelia:
In 3.1, she tells Ophelia,
And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish
That your good beauties be the happy cause
Of Hamlet's wildness: so shall I hope your virtues
Will bring him to his wonted way again,
To both your honours.
This is a kind of approval of their relationship from the Queen, a gift to Ophelia.
In the graveyard, Gertrude says of Ophelia,
I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife;
I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid,
And not have strew'd thy grave.
This is a kind of gift to Hamlet and Laertes, that they would hear the Queen express her disappointed hopes for Hamlet and Ophelia (contrary to Laertes' assumptions about Hamlet being out of Ophelia's league).
In the last scene (5.2), we learn that Gertrude is disappointed in Hamlet for arguing with Laertes at Ophelia's grave, and that she advises her son to make some kind of apology:
LORD
The queen desires you to use some gentle
entertainment to Laertes before you fall to play.
Hamlet takes her request to heart:
HAMLET
She well instructs me.
Hamlet is ready to receive this good advice from his mother because he has learned mercy first-hand as a gift from Providence by way of pirates, "thieves of mercy," who spared his life and brought him back to Denmark to fulfill his prophetic fate (4.6).
Gertrude is also quite protective of her son at the fencing match in 5.2, and like Veronica wiping the face of Christ on the way to the crucifixion, Gertrude wipes her son's face with a handkerchief.
These are all examples of how Gertrude is involved in even more moments of gift-exchange with other characters, not involving material gifts, but gifts that take the form of actions and words, offering ideas, inspiration, example, options for future action. In this way, characters who exchange good gifts become sources of grace for one another.
Concluding Observations:
While it is understandable that Protestant scholars might prefer to view Gertrude as relatively unchanged by the end of the play, and as representing the Whore of Babylon, the more we pay attention to the details of the play, the more we realize it’s really not a Protestant or a Catholic play, not pro-government religious propaganda, but rather, a play in which many characters evolve in light of their interactions, and which defies attempts to simplify and pigeon-hole it.
Some might conclude: Maybe Gertrude is not the Whore of Babylon, the Catholic Church, consorting with Claudius as Satan, and, like him, being doomed for all eternity? Maybe she is merely a human being who was a queen, and who evolved as a person?
I would agree.
Others might conclude: Maybe the play suggests that if Gertrude, who at first may seem to represent the Whore of Bablylon, is capable of repentance and acting more selflessly, inspired by grace through others, then perhaps even the Roman Catholic Church is capable of reform?
There may be some truth in that as well.
Next week: Back to Laertes in 5.2.
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Continued Next Week
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NOTE ON THIS SERIES OF POSTS:
Hamlet quotes are taken from the Complete Moby(tm) Shakespeare at mit.edu, not for any preference in a particular version or editor, but for simplicity & accessibility.
This is the latest installment in a multi-part series examining how characters interact in Hamlet, offering opportunities, gifts, planting seeds for future inspiration, or for changes of heart & mind. It follows ideas from Lewis Hyde (“The Labor of Gratitude,” a chapter in his book, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property).
- The more I examine characters in this way, the more I realize how the major characters in Hamlet are dynamic characters who change, becoming better or worse in one way or another. This approach goes against the grain of a great deal of scholarship that seems to reify (or thing-ify) too many characters (as foil, as Oedipal, as Machiavellian, etc.) and view them as more static, rather than as dynamic, fluid, interacting. For an index of previous posts in this series, see below.
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Index of other posts in this series:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2024/09/index-character-arcs-labors-of.html
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Disclaimer: If and when I quote or paraphrase bible passages or mention religion in many of my blog posts, I do not intend to promote any religion over another, nor am I attempting to promote religious belief in general; only to explore how the Bible and religion influenced Shakespeare, his plays, and his age.
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Thanks for reading!
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My current project is a book tentatively titled Hamlet’s Bible, about biblical allusions and plot echoes in Hamlet.
Below is a link to a list of some of my top posts (“greatest hits”), including a description of my book project (last item on the list):
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/12/top-20-hamlet-bible-posts.html
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[Clockwise from upper left:
Glenn Close as Gertrude, 1990 (with Mel Gibson as Hamlet), directed by Franco Zeffirelli;
Eileen Herlie as Gertrude, 1948 (with Lawrence Olivier as Hamlet), directed by Laurence Olivier (Herlie also played Gertrude in the 1964 production of Hamlet starring Richard Burton, directed by Bill Colleran & John Gielgud);
Diane Venora as Gertrude, 2000 (with Ethan Hawke as Hamlet), directed by Michael Almereyda;
Julie Christie as Gertrude, 1996 (with Kenneth Branagh as Hamlet), directed by Kenneth Branagh.]
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Gertrude as Recipient & Giver of Gifts: Labors of Gratitude & Regret in Hamlet, part 9
I had planned to continue with “Laertes’ Labors of Gratitude & Regret in Hamlet 5.2” this week, but it became increasingly clear to me how, in 5.2, what happens with Laertes is very contingent on developments with Gertrude, and what she does is contingent on her previous openness to the words and actions of Hamlet and Ophelia. So as multiple contingencies converge, every character depends even more on the previous words and actions of every other character.
The joke about oversimplifying statements observes that there are two kinds of people: Those who say there are two kinds of people, and everyone else. I will risk an oversimplifying statement: There are at least two approaches to Gertrude in 5.2: One claims she drinks from the cup because she can’t resist her own hungers or passions. Another claims she suspects there is poison and drinks to test the cup of wine before Hamlet drinks.
A Traditional View: Gertrude as a Slave to her Passions & as Whore of Babylon
In the older, more traditional view of some scholars, Gertrude is basically unchanged as a character by the end of the play and drinks the cup because she cannot help but give in to her urges, like her willingness to commit adultery with Claudius and enter into an incestuous marriage. This is consistent with the view of some scholars (such as David Kaula) that Claudius represents Satan, and Gertrude, the Whore of Bablylon, a cypher for the Catholic church in the eyes (perhaps especially) of some Protestant scholars.
In this interpretation, Gertrude drinks from the cup on an impulse, happy and distracted that Hamlet has made an overture of reconciliation toward Laertes, and toward Claudius in accepting his wager. She ignores Claudius' requests for her not to drink because she's a queen, swept up in the moment, used to getting her way, and is then surprised to find that the cup has been poisoned. This would view her as a somewhat static character, mostly unchanged from alleged adulterer, in spite of her discussion in her closet with her son, and her feelings of guilt upon seeing Ophelia in 4.5, and her eloquent account of Ophelia's death.
But in fact, we never see her make a choice like this in any other context in the play, except perhaps defying tradition and marrying her dead husband's brother. The text never refers to her habits of drinking (as it does Claudius), nor does it refer to her disobeying her new husband. To interpret Gertrude as unsuspicious and simply surprised to be poisoned doesn't seem consistent with the other choices we see her make in the play.
A More Dynamic, Interacting, Evolving Gertrude with Greater Agency
In another interpretation, demonstrated by veteran Hamlet actress Diane Venora in the Ethan Hawke film version of Hamlet (as well as by Penny Downie in the 2009 film directed by Gregory Doran, with David Tennant as Hamlet), Gertrude clearly suspects poison and drinks from the cup intentionally with that in mind. This interpretation might be especially supported if we pay attention to her previous encounters with other characters, encounters that offer her criticism and/or opportunities by way of ideas or inspiration, and therefore might be viewed as gifts offered to her, or even as Providence using others around her as embodiments of grace.
What might support this kind of interpretation?
Gertrude's Interactions with Hamlet & Ophelia Move Her Toward Growth
Gertrude is at first reluctant, then accepting, both of Hamlet’s scolding in the closet scene, and of a mad Ophelia she'd rather not speak to. She goes from resisting Hamlet's condemnations of her actions in marrying Claudius, to acknowledging certain unnamed inner spots on her soul, or guilt, and agreeing to keep Hamlet's secret from Claudius. She goes from having no desire to encounter Ophelia, to speaking to her, to giving an account of her death that seems to absolve Ophelia from suicide and blame accidents (a broken, "envious" sliver of a branch) for her death. The envious sliver of which she speaks, and for which she blames Ophelia's fall into the brook, may be a careful and figurative way of speaking about her new husband and his envy of his brother's crown and wife, which she learned about from her son in his "Mousetrap" play and from her son's scolding in her clost. Gertrude in these ways is evolving, regretful, increasingly sympathetic, and perhaps prepared to preempt Hamlet in drinking from the cup, testing it for her son's safety. If so, she is a linchpin for the end of the play.
Hamlet Encourages Gertrude to Turn From Sin (and Avoid his Father's Fate)
In acts 1.4 and 1.5, Hamlet encounters and later speaks with the ghost who tells him of how he died in a state of sin, and of the horrors of what seems to be purgatory:
GHOST
I am thy father's spirit,
Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood.
—Hamlet was deeply affected by this encounter with the ghost, who tells him,
...Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
Against thy mother aught: leave her to heaven
And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge,
To prick and sting her.
Hamlet disobeys his father on this point and seems to want to help her to repent of sin, to avoid a fate like his father’s. In 3.2, he says of his upcoming meeting with his mother,
“I will speak daggers to her, but use none”.
In 3.4, after stabbing the unseen Polonius, thinking it is Claudius, he tells her, “I must be cruel, only to be kind.”
She seems to be moved by what he says:
GERTRUDE:
O Hamlet, speak no more:
Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul;
And there I see such black and grained spots
As will not leave their tinct.
Some scholars have speculated that the ghost enters in this scene to stop Hamlet from urging his mother to repent of her sin, and to comfort her instead, because perhaps the ghost IS the devil in disguise and wishes for Gertrude to be damned. But it’s too late, and Gertrude does feel guilty.
Gertrude Displays Her Guilt Again and Witnesses Ophelia's Gifts
In Act 4, scene 5, Gertrude at first refuses to speak to Ophelia who seems to have gone mad, but is convinced by Horatio that it would be wiser to at least try. But before Ophelia enters, Gertrude observes,
To my sick soul, as sin's true nature is,
Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss:
So full of artless jealousy is guilt,
It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.
So in other words, for the first time in the play, because of her discussion with her son in her closet, she now speaks of having a sick and sinful soul, and to be guilty of sin. She might be thinking of having a life-makeover, or at least a soul-makeover, repenting somehow of her sins (which, again, are not named).
[Glenn Close as Gertrude, and Helena Bonham Carter as Ophelia, 1990, directed by Franco Zeffirelli.]
Like others, Gertrude witnesses Ophelia’s madness, hears her words, and watches as Ophelia either gives out, or pretends to give out, flowers as gifts, each with a meaning. Gertrude listens as Ophelia, in song, blames men for promising their love to women, but then being unfaithful. This echoes Hamlet’s warning to Ophelia in the nunnery scene, when Hamlet said “We are arrant knaves,
all; believe none of us.”
If Gertrude is paying attention to Ophelia’s song, Gertrude would do well to think of how Hamlet may be right, and Claudius may have deceived her, like the woman in the song, to gain the throne. This may be an opportunity, or gift of grace, that Ophelia’s song offers to Gertrude. In fact, Claudius promised love to Gertrude, but he will not save her from the poison cup; he'd rather save his own life and reputation first. In that way, Claudius is unfaithful, and Ophelia's song later applies to Claudius as well as Hamlet.
Gertrude's Account of Ophelia's Death: Not Suicide
Later, in Act 4, scene 7, it is Gertrude who delivers the sad news of Ophelia’s death to Laertes and Claudius:
GERTRUDE
There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.
Gertrude’s account of the drowning is not of a suicide. Instead, she blames the "envious" tree branch (which is bearing Ophelia’s weight, but which breaks because she is not hanging as many flowers on it as on other branches). Again, this crown-envy for the sliver of willow is similar to her new husband's crown envy.
Gertrude also blames the garments, “heavy with their drink,” for pulling Ophelia down to her death. (Hamlet describes Claudius as having drinking habits that make him, too, "heavy with drink.") But above all, Gertrude does not blame Ophelia.
For Ophelia’s part, in Gertrude's account (which may be fictional), she seems unafraid, or incapable of fear:
“she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress”.
If Gertrude's account is truthful (and not just a merciful fiction), Ophelia seems at peace with God, cast into the water by a broken branch, accepting of her own possible impending death, and the old tunes she is singing are old religious songs. To her Gertrude tell give this kind of account may be a gift to the listeners.
Or, if in fact this is a merciful fiction woven by Gertrude, then it is how Gertrude would like us to imagine Ophelia's death, so that we imagine her saved by faith, and allow her a Christian burial. This account, too, even if it is fiction, would be a kind of gift.
This is all a mystery whose heart we could never fully pluck, but we can ponder and respect the possibilities.
More Gifts from Ophelia's Last Moments
So we might observe that in Gertrude’s mind (or her merciful fiction), she is processing Ophelia’s death as something other than suicide, and noticing especially Ophelia’s fearlessness in the face of her possible death. Witnessing these things may plant ideas in Gertrude's mind, that if it came down to it, Gertrude need not commit suicide in despair, but might make her own death meaningful in some way, not fearing the risk of her own death, learning from Ophelia's example.
Or if this is fiction, perhaps Gertrude is using the occasion of Ophelia's death as a gift, to prompt Gertrude herself to consider how to transform her own possible death
Whether Gertrude gives a true account or a fictional one, this is still a Gertrude who is a recipient of a gift by learning and then conveying the news of Ophelia's death. And this process of Gertrude receiving the news and then conveying it is a transformative one for Gertrude.
If she can be transformed by this, then something of Ophelia might live on in Gertrude, in a manner perhaps not dissimilar from the Christian idea of the "communion of the saints," where living Christians pray and commune with the souls of the dead in eternal life with God, or the idea that the body of Christ is made up of many mutually dependent parts in communion with one another.
If we wish to view Gertrude as a dynamic character who changes for the better, we might observe that she takes to heart not only Hamlet’s scolding of her for her sinfulness and the news that Claudius is a murderer, but also Ophelia’s song about unfaithful men, and Ophelia's example of courage in the face of death. These prepare Gertrude to drink from the cup.
Or in religious language, we might note that Hamlet and Ophelia have, in their own different ways, planted seeds of grace in Gertrude.
What is Gertrude Thinking?
In drinking from the cup (5.2), Gertrude doesn’t know for sure whether there is poison or not. So she may be thinking:
—If I drink from the cup before Hamlet, and if there is *no* poison, which I suspect as a possibility, then perhaps Claudius is not so bad as Hamlet believed at the height of his madness, and perhaps Hamlet, who apologized to Laertes, will get along better with his uncle in the future. All may still be well?
—But if there *is* poison in the cup, then I would rather test it for my son and die in doing so, perhaps buying him some time, instead of remaining alive and married to Claudius, who by the poison would prove himself to be a monster.
In Gertrude's closet (3.4), Gertrude had told her son, "O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain." Hamlet replies,
O, throw away the worser part of it,
And live the purer with the other half.
As I have noted in a previous blog post, Hamlet is alluding to scripture:
...he is paraphrasing Matt 5:29-30: If your eye offends you, pluck it out… if your right hand offends you, cut it off….So by choosing to drink from the cup and disobey the warnings of Claudius, Gertrude knows she may be throwing away "the worser part" of herself (her union in marriage to Claudius, and those parts of her emotional self that were attracted to and in love with Claudius).
“better… that one of thy members perishe, [than] that thy whole body… be cast into hell.”
Instead of reading the gospel passage as a metaphor for ending personal vices, it reads Matt 5:29-30 as a metaphor for cutting off a husband and king: a significant twist!
The Fearlessness of Ophelia & Gertrude in the Face of Death
I have written before in a previous blog post of how the play toys with the themes of love and fear, and of the scriptural observation that, in love there can be no fear, for fear is driven out by the perfection of love.
We can't say for sure what is going through the mind of Ophelia as she goes to her watery death, or the mind of Gertrude as she drinks from the poison cup. But at least one possibility for Ophelia is that when she says in 4.5 that it was the "false steward" who "stole his master's daughter," she might recognize that her brother and father were "false stewards" to suggest to her that she was unworthy of a match with Hamlet. If Ophelia's true father is a transcendent God (as for all who pray the "Our Father"), she is worthy of any match. This idea is perhaps underscored in part by Hamlet's joke after "The Mousetrap," when he speaks of what a remarkable son he must be to so [a-]'stonish his mother, alluding to the gospel tale of the boy Jesus, lost in Jerusalem, found in the temple, amazing the elders and his parents.
If Ophelia and Gertrude are being perfected in love and grace, it's possible that fear of death is being driven from their minds and helping to motivate what may seem to be more selfless choices. This, of course, is a mystery we cannot pluck in any final sense, but it's a possibility. And it also echoes Hamlet's fearlessness in the face of death: "Let be," and "The readiness is all." And perhaps it is consistent with Laertes' perfection in love as he repents of his mistakes and shares forgiveness with Hamlet.
Multiple Contingencies
If Gertrude doesn’t make her choice to drink the cup, then this may change many other things in the last scene: The death of Gertrude is one essential element that finally helps convince Laertes to repent of his plans for revenge, and to reveal to Hamlet, “The King’s to blame.”
So Hamlet (3.4) and Ophelia (4.5, 4.7) help Gertrude consider repentance and courage;
Gertrude helps Ophelia (4.7) by viewing her death as something other than suicide;
Gertrude helps Hamlet (5.2) by drinking the cup first and revealing the poison;
Gertrude helps Laertes repent of revenge by dying first and exposing Claudius;
Laertes then helps Hamlet;
Hamlet kills (executes?) Claudius.
Hamlet & Laertes exchange forgiveness;
Hamlet offers a gift of reparation to Fortinbras.
If Hamlet & Ophelia had not helped Gertrude, and if Gertrude had not been open to their help, Laertes may simply have obtained revenge by killing Hamlet, Claudius may have remained on the throne when Fortinbras arrived, and war between Denmark and Norway may have broken out after Fortinbras attempts to claim his “rights of memory,” resulting in perhaps thousands more deaths than we already have in the play.
So in this way, all the characters who receive and give various kinds of grace to one another are woven together in labors of repentance and gratitude. But in the end, Claudius stands alone: Claudius persistently refuses offered moments of grace and the option of repentance, so he is excluded from the relationships of gifts and the grace they might confer.
Bonus gifts from Gertrude:
Gertrude offers other gifts to Laertes, Hamlet, and Ophelia:
In 3.1, she tells Ophelia,
And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish
That your good beauties be the happy cause
Of Hamlet's wildness: so shall I hope your virtues
Will bring him to his wonted way again,
To both your honours.
This is a kind of approval of their relationship from the Queen, a gift to Ophelia.
In the graveyard, Gertrude says of Ophelia,
I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife;
I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid,
And not have strew'd thy grave.
This is a kind of gift to Hamlet and Laertes, that they would hear the Queen express her disappointed hopes for Hamlet and Ophelia (contrary to Laertes' assumptions about Hamlet being out of Ophelia's league).
In the last scene (5.2), we learn that Gertrude is disappointed in Hamlet for arguing with Laertes at Ophelia's grave, and that she advises her son to make some kind of apology:
LORD
The queen desires you to use some gentle
entertainment to Laertes before you fall to play.
Hamlet takes her request to heart:
HAMLET
She well instructs me.
Hamlet is ready to receive this good advice from his mother because he has learned mercy first-hand as a gift from Providence by way of pirates, "thieves of mercy," who spared his life and brought him back to Denmark to fulfill his prophetic fate (4.6).
Gertrude is also quite protective of her son at the fencing match in 5.2, and like Veronica wiping the face of Christ on the way to the crucifixion, Gertrude wipes her son's face with a handkerchief.
These are all examples of how Gertrude is involved in even more moments of gift-exchange with other characters, not involving material gifts, but gifts that take the form of actions and words, offering ideas, inspiration, example, options for future action. In this way, characters who exchange good gifts become sources of grace for one another.
Concluding Observations:
While it is understandable that Protestant scholars might prefer to view Gertrude as relatively unchanged by the end of the play, and as representing the Whore of Babylon, the more we pay attention to the details of the play, the more we realize it’s really not a Protestant or a Catholic play, not pro-government religious propaganda, but rather, a play in which many characters evolve in light of their interactions, and which defies attempts to simplify and pigeon-hole it.
Some might conclude: Maybe Gertrude is not the Whore of Babylon, the Catholic Church, consorting with Claudius as Satan, and, like him, being doomed for all eternity? Maybe she is merely a human being who was a queen, and who evolved as a person?
I would agree.
Others might conclude: Maybe the play suggests that if Gertrude, who at first may seem to represent the Whore of Bablylon, is capable of repentance and acting more selflessly, inspired by grace through others, then perhaps even the Roman Catholic Church is capable of reform?
There may be some truth in that as well.
Next week: Back to Laertes in 5.2.
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Continued Next Week
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NOTE ON THIS SERIES OF POSTS:
Hamlet quotes are taken from the Complete Moby(tm) Shakespeare at mit.edu, not for any preference in a particular version or editor, but for simplicity & accessibility.
This is the latest installment in a multi-part series examining how characters interact in Hamlet, offering opportunities, gifts, planting seeds for future inspiration, or for changes of heart & mind. It follows ideas from Lewis Hyde (“The Labor of Gratitude,” a chapter in his book, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property).
- The more I examine characters in this way, the more I realize how the major characters in Hamlet are dynamic characters who change, becoming better or worse in one way or another. This approach goes against the grain of a great deal of scholarship that seems to reify (or thing-ify) too many characters (as foil, as Oedipal, as Machiavellian, etc.) and view them as more static, rather than as dynamic, fluid, interacting. For an index of previous posts in this series, see below.
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Index of other posts in this series:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2024/09/index-character-arcs-labors-of.html
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Disclaimer: If and when I quote or paraphrase bible passages or mention religion in many of my blog posts, I do not intend to promote any religion over another, nor am I attempting to promote religious belief in general; only to explore how the Bible and religion influenced Shakespeare, his plays, and his age.
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Thanks for reading!
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