The Queen's Involvement In Hamlet

THE QUEEN’S INVOLVEMENT INTHE MURDER OF THE KING (HAMLET): In Shakespeare’s famous play, “Hamlet” Queen Gertrude is the mother of the hero Hamlet, and the wife of the villain Claudius. Claudius is a very wicked person who killed his own brother- the king, when he was sleeping in his orchard. It was told to the people that the king was bitten by a serpent and died of the serpent’s sting. But the truth of the matter was that his brother Claudius, who now wears his crown and has wedded his wife, had killed him by pouring poison into his ear as he slept in the orchard. After murdering his brother, Claudius married a few days later, his brother’s wife Gertrude, who is, one of Shakespeare’s most tragic characters. She is the first as Laertes is the last, to be tainted by Claudius. But while Laertes dies in forgiveness, no such gentle influence alleviates Gertrude’s end. After her own sin, everything that she holds dear is blasted. By her one sin, she condemned herself to endure all its devastating consequences; her son driven mad, killing Polonius, denouncing her and her crime in cruel terms that she cannot rebut. We see her for the last time at the fencing match where she meets her death because she cannot resist the desire to please her son by drinking to his success. And when she falls dying, she collects her energies to deny her involvement and to warn Hamlet: “No, no, the drink the drink--- o my dear Hamlet, The drink, the drink! I am poisoned.” Now the question is how far is the queen involved in the murder of the king by Claudius? To know the answer of this question, let us discuss the charges against her. The first and the main charge is that she married for the second time only after two months of her former husband’s death. As Hamlet says in his first soliloquy “Frailty thy name is woman.” “A little month, or ever those shoes were old With which she followed my poor father’s body.” She forgets her kind husband in a short period, even a beast cannot do so. “A beast that wants discourse reason Would have mourned longer.” Then the ghost also remarks on her act as: “So to deduce-won to his shameful lust The will of my most seeming virtuous queen.” In another soliloquy, Hamlet calls her as “0 most pernicious woman.” As Dowden a critic, comments on her. “The timid, self indulgent, sensuous, sentimental queen is as remote from true woman’s virtue as Claudius is from the virtue of royal manhood.” Another charge against her is that she did not mind her lover usurping her son’s right to the throne. Again, there is another charge that she knew well that Hamlet would be disturbed by her hasty marriage, while he was already facing a mental and emotional shock in the death of his loving father and, she herself admits it: “I doubt it is no other but the main His father death and our over-hasty marriage.” Why did she not take care of her loving son’s feelings and his grief at that moment? Suppose that Gertrude is really involved in her husband’s murder, the question is what were her purposes in this matter? There may be two main purposes of her involvement. (I) Her wish to be a queen and (ii) Her love with Claudius. If we say that she helped Claudius in the murder, because she wished to be Claudius’s queen and to raise her previous position, it may not be the cause because she was already the queen of a better king than Claudius. Hamlet also reminds her as: “So excellent a king, that was to this”? She was on the highest position, then why she wished to improve her 1

present position. She still remained a queen, either of the late king or of Claudius. So it may not be her purpose. Secondly, suppose that Claudius loved her much, so she preferred him to the late king and a mad passion swept her into the arms of Claudius. It is not true, because we can see that her former husband also loved her very much. Hamlet tells us about it as: “That he might not between the winds of heaven visit her face too roughly.” The ghost also mentions: “Whose love was of that dignity That it went hand in hand even with the vow I made to her in marriage.” Again if we say that she herself loved Claudius and thus helped him in the murder of her husband, the fact may not be ignored that she was not a “teen-ager girl.” She was an aged lady, Hamlet also remarks on this possibility: “You cannot call it love, for at your age The heyday in the blood is tame.” That is why; the charges are not true and there is no reason for her involvement in the murder of the late king. There are many points in the play itself that indicate that she is not involved in the murder. First of all, when the ghost tells Hamlet about the secret of the murder it asks Hamlet to revenge of his death and kill Claudius , it forbids him to harm the queen but let her leave to be punished by heaven and by her conscience. It shows that the ghost also knows that only Claudius is the murderer. If the queen were involved, the ghost would not have ordered Hamlet to leave her. She only committed a sin by marrying Claudius so hastily. Her sin is not very serious because in almost any religion marriage with the dead husband’s brother is neither a crime nor a sin. No doubt, the queen married a second time with indecent haste but she was certainty not privy to the murder of her husband either before the deed or after it. There is no sign of her being so and there are clear signs that she was not. The representation of the murder in the play arranged by Hamlet does not move her and it is a clear sign that she was not privy to the murder of the king. When the player queen says, “ None wed the second but who killed the first” and also she says: “Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife If once, a widow ever I be a wife.” At this, there is no sign of guilt on her face as on that of Claudius, but she says only, “the lady doth protest too much”. If she were also involved, she would have reacted in the same way as Claudius did. Moreover when Claudius repents, he also condemns himself only: “for which ‘I did the murder”. He uses first person singular “I” and not “we”. It also shows that he himself is the murderer, not the queen. In another scene, when Hamlet blames her as “As kill a king and marry with his brother”, she does not utter any word on “Marry”, but immediately asks about, “As kill a king?” She wonders at Hamlet’s strange question and further enquires: “What have I done that thou darest wag thy tongue, in noise so rude against me?” She is quite innocent in this matter, so she does not understand what Hamlet is talking about. Now it is clear, she is not involved at all in the murder of her former husband. Then the question is why she married Claudius so hastily. In this case there may be many causes. First we know that Claudius, her present husband, is a very cunning and wicked man. Hamlet declares him as “one may smile and smile, and be a villain.” It reveals his hypocrisy and perhaps in Gertrude’s matter he also displayed the same trait of his nature and seduced her. When she was in the condition of grief after her husband’s death, perhaps, she was forced to accept the immediate available support in the form of Claudius. She has little personality to set against the strong individuality of the men. She rarely takes any positive action. Moreover, there was a possibility that if she did not marry Claudius he might marry some other woman, and she could not be called the queen of Denmark in her future. So she made immediate decision to marry him and remained a queen also. Besides 2

it, she has a very shallow nature. She loves to be happy and to see other happy. It was pleasant for her to sit upon her thrown and see smiling faces round her. She thought it foolish in Hamlet to persist in grieving for his father as she says to him: “Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off”. She dies a better woman than she had lived. When Hamlet tells her what she has done she feels remorse and says. “0 Hamlet speak no more, thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul.” She is a faithful wife to her husband, Claudius. When Hamlet forbids her to go to Claudius’s bed room, she does not obey him because she cannot break off her relationship with the king. She shows spirit when Laertes excites the mob, and she stands up for her husband when she can do nothing to help her son. So to conclude, it is quite clear, no doubt, that the queen is not involved in the murder of the king at all. Her only error is to re-marry so hastily the murderer of her former husband. If she had married after some time, perhaps Hamlet would not have opposed her marriage so intensely. As Wood and Marshall remark: “The queen is the instrument by means of which the crime is performed, rather than a criminal herself. She is a weak woman, but not consciously wicked or depraved. She is ‘seeming virtuous’ and no doubt has deceived herself till she came to imagine herself a very pattern of virtue,”

Written&Composed By: Prof.A.R.Somroo M.A.English&Education. 0661610063 Khangarh.

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