Part 31: Gertrude as Protestant Allegory (Interlude A)
[My previous post said that the next four would explore four different interpretations of Gertrude; this post explores the first of those interpretations in greater detail, an allegorical reading.] One of my least favorite interpretations of Gertrude in Shakespeare’s Hamlet is when people read her merely as a Protestant allegory for the corrupt Catholic church. In this reading, Gertrude (like the Roman church) is a slave to her passions; she cannot resist either her lust for Claudius or her desire for wine.[1] Many readers and playgoers today are too removed from Protestant-Catholic debates and propaganda in Shakespeare’s time, so to suggest this allegory often elicits only confusion. In the Bible, in Revelations 17, Protestants found an analogy for corruption in the Roman Catholic church, comparing it to a fallen woman selling favors, worshiping idols of pleasure instead of the “one true God.” It helps to know that Shakespeare and most everyone in England and on the continent were exp...