Part 33: A Suicidal Gertrude (Interlude C)

[In an earlier post, I mentioned four contrasting interpretations of Gertrude, the third being a suicidal Gertrude as portrayed by Lia Williams in a 2018 BBC production with Andrew Scott as Hamlet, dir. Icke. This post considers that third reading of Gertrude.]

Some consider Gertrude drinking the poison cup in Hamlet 5.2 as an act of suicide.

But for it to be suicide, Gertrude at least needs to suspect that the cup has been poisoned: If she is ignorant of poison and unsuspicious, it cannot be suicide; a reaction of surprise would then make sense.

If she merely suspects and is testing the cup for poison intended for her son, an act of risk and selflessness, it is not strictly suicide.[1]

For suicide as sole intention, she must not merely suspect, but know for certain that the cup has been, poisoned.

The texts of the play do not support certainty for Gertrude that the cup has been poisoned: Claudius and Laertes conspired about the poison apart from her; she had no way of knowing.

But a 2018 BBC production of Hamlet (with Lia Williams as Gertrude [2]) made a change that deviates from all three of the main Shakespeare texts of the play [3]: They have an already suspicious Gertrude eavesdrop on Claudius and Laertes while they conspire their poison plan.

This gives Gertrude greater certainty and agency; as such it may appeal to some and speak better to our age: Gertrude has an option of eavesdropping, or of conspiring like Lady Macbeth.

But Gertrude is not Lady Macbeth, and portraying her as being certain of the poison has a cost: In the original texts, if Gertrude is merely suspicious, she faces an uncertainty, a mystery whose heart she cannot easily pluck.

(Edit: I would add: If mystery is like an immanent or incarnate presence of the "divine" - or of transcendence - then how we and the characters act in contexts of mystery or ambiguity is essentially a part of how we manifest our relationship to the divine, God, "Providence," either in respect and reverence, or in disrespect and hubris....)

In the 2018 production, why does she commit suicide by drinking the cup? As a kind of revenge, to teach her murderous husband a lesson?

Does she despair of living any longer if her son will soon be poisoned by Laertes’ rapier?

She tries to drink the entire cup, leaving none for later lines about Claudius, Horatio, and the cup to make sense.

This is director Robert Icke’s Gertrude, not Shakespeare’s.

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NOTES: All references to Hamlet are to the Folger Shakespeare Library online version: https://shakespeare.folger.edu/shakespeares-works/hamlet/entire-play/

[1] Or it might be a matter of mixed intentions: If she suspects, and it turns out to be poison, then she might both prefer to have saved her son, but also in the process to end her life and marriage to the murderous Claudius. Yet in this case, suicide is a kind of back-up plan, in case her testing of the chalice for poison results in the realization that it is, in fact, poison. (And yet how could the English Church, which considered suicide a damnable sin, judge a person who risked their life to test a cup for poison and save another? How do we judge soldiers who go on "suicide missions" in wartime?) Some scholars like to say Shakespeare “interrogates” certain assumptions of his time and culture, but since 2001, Guantanamo, extraordinary rendition, “enhanced interrogation” and Abu Ghraib, I prefer “scrutinize” over “interrogate.”

[2] The 2018 production stars Andrew Scott as Hamlet, dir. Robert Icke.

[3] The three main known texts of Shakespeare’s Hamlet are the First (“bad”) Quarto (1603), the Second Quarto (1604-5), and the First Folio (1623).


IMAGE:
Detail, Edwin Austin Abbey  (1852–1911), The Play Scene in Hamlet (Act III, Scene 2) (1897), detail. Yale University Art Gallery. Public domain via https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edwin_Austin_Abbey_-_The_Play_Scene_in_%E2%80%9CHamlet%E2%80%9D_(Act_III,_Scene_2)_-_1937.2171_-_Yale_University_Art_Gallery.jpg




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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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