Part 36: Gertrude builds a better mousetrap for Claudius (Interlude D.3)
This scene is a variation of King Aegeus, saving son Theseus from a poison cup from stepmother, Medea — with some genders switched and stakes raised.[2]
Gertrude will test the wine by drinking it, without saying that is her reason for doing so.
In this she sets a better, simpler mousetrap for Claudius: If it is poison, he could stop her and confess. If not, maybe “mad” Hamlet was mistaken about Claudius?
Hamlet’s “Mousetrap” foreshadows (and sheds light on) Gertrude’s.
She cannot pluck the mystery’s heart without drinking from the cup to test it, and to test Claudius.
By drinking, in effect, Gertrude tells Claudius:
If you would poison my son, you must go through me first.
In her closet, Hamlet had told her that he would later beg a blessing of her [3]. Testing the wine for poison is the blessing she offers her son, without his having to ask.
This is not a suicide [4], but an act of love for her son and Denmark, by a woman running out of options, trying to make the best of them.
She says she drinks to Hamlet’s “fortune” (luck).
Claudius tells her “do not drink” [5] — but does not confess!
It is likely — still not certain: He poisoned the cup.[6]
Her response?
GERTRUDE: I will, my lord; I pray you pardon me.[7]
Gertrude disobeys Claudius openly for the first time in the play. She asks for his pardon, a nod to cultural expectations of the age that a wife (even a queen) who has disobeyed her husband might at least ask forgiveness.[8]
So Claudius fails the test of Gertrude’s mousetrap, and this makes him even more hell-bound.
In her character arc [9] [10], Gertrude has become a woman who
- repented of her mistake (to have married a man she now suspects was her husband’s murderer);
- sets a mousetrap to prove her suspicions;
- and risks her life to save her son long enough to bring a murderous usurper to justice.
This reading views her as being perhaps “saved” - and more necessary to the play’s resolution than other interpretations that pay less attention to these details.
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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] She suspects poison for all the reasons stated in my post from the previous week https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2024/03/part-35-why-gertrude-likely-suspects.htm, especially for having witnessed the playlet, “The Mousetrap,” in which someone poisons a sleeping king in his ear, and later woos his victim’s wife, a queen. Gertrude tells Hamlet in her closet that the playlet “much offended” Claudius, so she and Claudius both understand the implication: Hamlet has accused Claudius of poisoning King Hamlet. Those who resist the possibility that Gertrude suspects poison may do so because they resist the idea that she has more agency than is traditionally assumed and exercises that agency in drinking from the cup.
[2] See my previous post from 2022 on Claudius as resembling the step-parent/poisoner Medea, and Gertrude as resembling the biological parent, King Aegeus, with Hamlet resembling Theseus, for whom the poison cup was intended:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/12/poison-cups-and-martyrs-gertrude-medea.html
[3] 3.4.192-3: "...when you are desirous to be blest, I’ll blessing beg of you." Testing the wine for poison fulfills this earlier foreshadowing and prediction by Hamlet in her closet. See previous blog post:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/11/hamlet-to-gertrude-when-you-are.html
[4] If one sees a child swerve on a bike nearby toward an oncoming truck, and one darts into the road to pull them back, one may not be certain one will succeed, or that one will survive the effort, but one still might seize the opportunity to try to save the child, even if it results in one’s death. This is not suicidal. It might be selfless and heroic. We only live so long: Why not try to help others? Gertrude’s act of drinking the cup is like that inasmuch as it’s a mystery whether the cup is poison. Once Claudius tells her not to drink, it may be a bit more certain that Claudius has poisoned the cup, so to that extent, it may be that Gertrude chooses not to live if in fact the cup is poisoned. To that extent, it may seem a kind of *conditional* suicide. Christian nations have long sent soldiers on what seem to be “suicide missions” without condemning the soldiers for suicide.
[5] 5.2.317.
[6] The audience knows Claudius poisoned the cup, but Gertrude and Hamlet do not.
[7] 5.2.318.
[8] This also underscores the idea that Gertrude is repenting of sin and inclined toward heaven, while Claudius is not and inclined toward hell.
[9] In her character arc, she may be repenting of having had an affair with Claudius, but here is no proof of the affair (the ghost may be lying). See 1.4.77-82, where Horatio speaks of how the ghost may tempt him, deprive him of reason and draw him into madness, and 2.2.627-632, where Hamlet says, “The spirit that I have seen / May be a devil, and the devil hath power / T’ assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps, / [...] / …to damn me.”
- Gertrude and Claudius never admit to an affair. This may be a lie the ghost tells to Hamlet to damn him, or simply because it’s a misconception that is yet to be purged from his soul, as he is not yet done in purgatory (see 1.5.14-18).
[10] The ghost (who, again, may be lying) claims Gertrude married Claudius out of lust, but there is no proof of that. It may have been merely to save Demark from Norwegian invasion. In 1.2.9, Claudius refers to his new wife, Queen Gertrude, as “Th’ imperial jointress to this warlike state,” and very soon notes,
“Young Fortinbras,
Holding a weak supposal of our worth
Or thinking by our late dear brother’s death
Our state to be disjoint and out of frame,
Colleaguèd with this dream of his advantage,
He hath not failed to pester us with message
Importing the surrender of those lands
Lost by his father, with all bonds of law,
To our most valiant brother—so much for him.” (1.2.17-25)
- In other words, the marriage seems to have been made to appear to convince Norway that they are still strong and warlike.
Why didn’t Shakespeare say this instead of being ambiguous? The play is, in part, about ambiguity, about the difficulty plucking the hearts of mysteries. But it’s also Shakespeare’s longest play. It would have been much longer if he had more fully explored all the mysteries of Gertrude’s choices.
IMAGES:
William Salter Herrick (c.1807-1891). Hamlet in the Queen's chamber (ca. 1857), detail. Public domain via Folger Shakespeare Library at https://www.pinterest.com/pin/555420566546390752/
William Russell Flint. Medea offers the poison cup to Theseus. From 1912, collected by Charles Kingsley in “The Heroes, or Greek Fairy Tales for my Children," London: Philip Lee Warner (Riccardi Press) for the Medici Society. https://catalogue.swanngalleries.com/full//764/718764.jpg
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INDEX OF OPHELIA POSTS:
My 2023 series on Ophelia, and earlier Ophelia posts:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2023/10/index-of-ophelia-posts-2023-series-and.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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