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- Adelman, Janet. “Man and
Wife Is One Flesh: Hamlet and the Confrontation with the
Maternal
Body.” Suffocating Mothers: Fantasies of Maternal
Origin in Shakespeare’s Plays, Hamlet to The
Tempest. By Adelman. New York: Routledge, 1992. 11-37.
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- Bergoffen, Debra B. “Mourning,
Woman, and the Phallus: Lacan’s Hamlet.”
Cultural Semiosis:
Tracing the Signifier. Ed. Hugh J. Silverman. Continental
Philosophy VI. New York: Routledge, 1998. 140-53.
- Fienberg, Nona. "Jephthah's
Daughter: The Parts Ophelia Plays." Old Testament Women
in Western Literature. Ed. Raymond-Jean Frontain and Jan Wojcit.
Conway: UCA, 1991. 128-43.
- Hassel, R. Chris, Jr. “Mouse
and Mousetrap in Hamlet.” Shakespeare-Jahrbuch
135 (1999): 77- 92.
- Hassel, R. Chris, Jr. “Wormwood,
Wormwood.” Deutsche Shakespeare—Gesellschaft
West: Jahrbuch [no vol. #] (1993): 150-62.
- Jardine, Lisa. “‘No
offence i’ th’ world’: Hamlet and Unlawful
Marriage.” Uses of History:
Marxism, Postmodernism and the Renaissance. Ed. Francis
Barker, Peter Hume, and Margaret Iverson. Essex Symposia: Literature/Politics/Theory.
Manchester: Manchester UP, 1991. 123-39. [Reprinted in David Scott
Kastan’s Critical Essays on Shakespeare’s Hamlet
(1995).]
- Kusunoki, Akiko. “‘Oh
most pernicious woman’: Gertrude in the Light of Ideas on
Remarriage
in Early Seventeenth-Century England.” Hamlet and
Japan. Ed. Yoshiko Uéno. Hamlet Collection
2. New York: AMS, 1995. 169-84.
- Loberg,
Harmonie. “Queen Gertrude: Monarch, Mother, Murderer.” Atenea
24.1 (June 2004): 59-71.
- O’Brien, Ellen J. “Mapping
the Role: Criticism and the Construction of Shakespearean
Character.” Shakespearean Illuminations: Essays in
Honor of Marvin Rosenberg. Ed. Jay L. Halio and Hugh Richmond.
Newark: U of Delaware P, 1998. 13-32.
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- Pennington, Michael. Hamlet: A
User’s Guide. New York: Limelight Editions, 1996.
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Stanton, Kay. " Hamlet's
Whores." New Essays on Hamlet. Ed. Mark Thornton
Burnett and John Manning. Hamlet Collection 1. New York:
AMS, 1994. 167-88.
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Adelman, Janet. “Man and
Wife Is One Flesh: Hamlet and the Confrontation with the
Maternal
Body.” Suffocating Mothers: Fantasies of Maternal Origin
in Shakespeare’s Plays, Hamlet to The Tempest.
By Adelman. New York: Routledge, 1992. 11-37.
FEMINISM / GERTRUDE / HAMLET / PSYCHOANALYTIC
This monograph chapter argues that Hamlet “redefines
the son’s position between two fathers by relocating it in relation
to an indiscriminately sexual maternal body that threatens to annihilate
the distinction between the fathers and hence problematizes the son’s
paternal identification” (14-15). Hamlet “rewrites
the story of Cain and Abel as the story of Adam and Eve, relocating
masculine identity in the presence of the adulterating female”
(30). Gertrude “plays out the role of the missing Eve: her body
is the garden in which her husband dies, her sexuality the poisonous
weeds that kill him, and poison the world—and the self—for
her son” (30). The absence of the father combined with the presence
of the “engulfing mother” awakens “all the fears
incident to the primary mother-child bond” (30). The solution
is for Hamlet to remake his mother “in the image of Virgin Mother
who could guarantee his father’s purity, and his own, repairing
the boundaries of his selfhood” (31). In the closet scene, Hamlet
attempts “to remake his mother pure by divorcing her from her
sexuality” (32-33). Although Gertrude “remains relatively
opaque, more a screen for Hamlet’s fantasies about her than
a fully developed character in her own right,” the son “at
least believes that she has returned to him as the mother he can call
‘good lady’ (3.4.182)” (34). As a result, Hamlet
achieves “a new calm and self-possession” but at a high
price: “for the parents lost to him at the beginning of the
play can be restored only insofar as they are entirely separated from
their sexual bodies. This is a pyrrhic solution to the problems of
embodiedness and familial identity . . .” (35).
[ top ]
Aguirre, Manuel. Life, Crown,
and Queen: Gertrude and the Theme of Sovereignty. Review
of English Studies 47 (1996): 163-74.
GERTRUDE / MYTHIC CRITICISM / NEW HISTORICISM
This article seeks to explore Renaissance changes in the application
of a traditional literary metaphor, sovereignty, by focusing
on the mythical status of Gertrude and, beyond this, to explore
the role, and the fate, of myth in Hamlet (163). Evidence
in Celtic, Greek, and Germanic myths, including The Odyssey,
demonstrates consistent attachment of significance to the symbols of
cup, water, and clothcommonly associated with female sovereigns.
The (re)appearance of these elements in Hamlet creates intriguing
parallels and suggests that Gertrude, not Claudius, possesses sole authority
to choose the new king. Some myths offer a defense of the charges against
Gertrude (e.g., adultery). For example, in myth there appears a tendency
to connect sovereignty with marriage/sexual union. Such myths afford
an explanation for the immediacy and compression of wedding and coronation
in Hamlet 1.2, which conflicts with the modern perspective of
chronological order. While the queen is the life is the crown
through validating traditional myth (169), the increasing realism of
the Renaissance causes a loss of meaning and thus a crux in the play:
Hamlet, a realist, views the Queens marriage to Claudius
as stripped of symbolic meaning, as only adultery (171). Subsequently,
Hamlet presents the conflict itself between the old and
new as embodied in a modern heros confrontation with an ancient
myth (174).
[ top ]
Bergoffen, Debra B. “Mourning,
Woman, and the Phallus: Lacan’s Hamlet.” Cultural
Semiosis:
Tracing the Signifier. Ed. Hugh J. Silverman. Continental
Philosophy VI. New York: Routledge, 1998. 140-53.
FEMINISM / GERTRUDE / PSYCHOANALYTIC
Concurring with “Lacan’s notions of the
phallus, jouissance, the symbolic, the imaginary, and the
signifying chain” (140), this article suggests that Gertrude
demonstrates “the way woman’s complicity is essential
to the patriarchal order as she provides a glimpse of a woman who
steps outside its parameters” (141). In the role of mourning,
woman represents “the invisible medium through whom the phallus
passes” (144). But Gertrude substitutes “marriage nuptials
for mourning rituals”; her marriage to Claudius “violates
the father who has not been properly remembered, and it violates the
son who is denied his legacy” (146). Gertrude’s “refusal
to mourn brings back the ghost and fuels its impossible request: that
the son do what the mother will not, legitimize the father”
(146). But Hamlet, a male bound by patriarchal laws, cannot perform
the “social act” of mourning, as he and Laertes prove
at Ophelia’s burial (141). And, as long as Gertrude “confers
legitimacy on Claudius, Hamlet’s action is barred” (149).
The son begins the process of “re-inserting his mother into
the patriarchal phallic order” in the closet scene by accusing
her “of being too old to love,” by de-legitimizing her
“mode of otherness” (149). Gertrude, in death, finally
frees Hamlet to act by being unable to mourn Claudius, but her absence
means no mourning and, hence, no mediation for the transference of
power: “in the absence of women, Denmark comes under the rule
of its enemy,” Fortinbras (151-52). “Rejecting the role
of passive mediator Gertrude plays the game of jouissance”
(153). Yes, Gertrude is destroyed as a result, but she succeeds “in
exposing the myth of the male phallus” and “provides us
with a glimpse of a signifier placed outside the patriarchal structure
of silenced mourning women” (153).
[ top ]
Fienberg, Nona. "Jephthah's
Daughter: The Parts Ophelia Plays." Old Testament Women in
Western Literature. Ed. Raymond-Jean Frontain and Jan Wojcit.
Conway: UCA, 1991. 128-43.
FEMINISM / GERTRUDE / NEW HISTORICISM / OPHELIA / THEOLOGICAL
This essay explores "cultural resonances between
the politically unstable time of Judges in Israel's history, the political
confusion in Hamlet's Denmark, and the anxiety over succession
in late-Elizabethan England" (133). While Jephthah's daughter
and Ophelia share similarities, they also differ in an important way:
the unnamed daughter is an obedient sacrifice, and Ophelia "develops
from her status as a victim" to "an author of a potentially
different story, a woman's story" (133-34). Ophelia comes to
realize her subversive potential and, in a commanding oration about
the weakening of Hamlet's "noble mind," laments the lose
of her own political ambitions (135). But her madness empowers her
with liberties, such as demanding a meeting with Gertrude. Once granted
entrance, "she, like a wandering player, comes to hold a mirror
up to the court" (136). Gone is her submissive voice, replaced
by "a range of voices" (137). Ophelia now "commands
attention" (137). Interestingly, her invasion of the court parallels
Laertes' rebellious entrance: they have "competing political
claims, his assertive and explicit, hers subversive and encoded in
mad woman's language" (137). Because her songs "introduce
the protesting voice of oppressed women in society" through the
veils of a ballad culture, Ophelia is not understood by her male audience;
but her "rebellion against the double standard and its oppression
of women arouses fear in Gertrude, who understands" (138). When
the Queen reports Ophelia's drowning, she insists "on her time
and the attention of the plotting men" (138). Her description
portrays "a woman who draws her understanding of her world from
women's culture" (139). The Queen, "perhaps like Jephthah's
daughter's maiden friends, returned from temporary exile to interpret
the meaning of the sacrificed daughter's life" (140).
[ top ]

Hassel, R. Chris, Jr. “Mouse
and Mousetrap in Hamlet.” Shakespeare-Jahrbuch
135 (1999): 77- 92.
CLAUDIUS / GERTRUDE / HAMLET / MOUSETRAP / NEW HISTORICISM
/ PROVERBS / RHETORICAL
Expanding on John Doebler’s work, this essay
explores the plethora of connotations of mouse and mousetrap.
In relation to Gertrude, the mouse reference in the closet scene
could be “a term of endearment” or a pejorative reference
to a lustful person (79). Historically, mouse is also connected
with “the devil’s entrapment of human lust with the
mousetrap” (80); hence, Hamlet’s diction suggests that
he perceives Gertrude “at once as the snare that catches the
devil Claudius (and the son Hamlet?) in lust, and snared herself
in the same devil’s mousetrap” (82). With Claudius,
the mouse implies “destructive and lascivious impulses”
(84). Hamlet also is associated with the mouse in his role as mouser
or metaphorical cat. For example, the “cat-like, teasing method
in Hamlet’s madness” appears in his dialogue with Claudius
immediately prior to the start of The Mousetrap (88). The
mousetrap trope becomes “part of a pattern of images in Hamlet
that poises the clarity of poetic justice against a universe of
dark of unknowing,” as “the trapper must himself die
to purify a diseased kingdom” (91).
[ top ]
Hassel, R. Chris, Jr. “Wormwood,
Wormwood.” Deutsche Shakespeare—Gesellschaft West:
Jahrbuch [no vol. #] (1993): 150-62.
CLAUDIUS / GERTRUDE / HAMLET / THEOLOGICAL
This study comments on Hamlet’s reference
to “Wormwood, Wormwood” in The Mousetrap
scene (3.2.173) with the belief that “Herbal, literary and
theological uses provide unexpectedly suggestive contexts for
expanding our sense of Hamlet, Gertrude and Claudius within this
highly charged dramatic moment, and in the larger play”
(150). Theological connotations of the word suggest, among other
things, mortification, meaning that Hamlet’s words “refer
to the salutary contrition and confession Hamlet expects the Player-Queen’s
words to induce in his mother” (151). Persistently lacking
contrition in the closet scene, Gertrude receives a continued,
intensified dose of “wormwood,” administered by Hamlet
(152). Also relevant to Gertrude, wormwood is biblically associated
with harlotry and punishment/judgement (153). In Romeo and
Juliet, wormwood is described as “the bitter herb used
in weaning a child from his mother’s breast” (154);
hence, the implication in Hamlet is that the mother/son
relationship alters. The herb was also used as a purgative medicine
(156), an antidote (159), an air freshener (160), and a “deterrent
to mice and rats” (160). All of these possibilities develop
linguistic references, themes, and motifs in the play. For example,
the last suggests that Hamlet’s wormwood “might at
once expel the mouse-like lust in his too-lascivious mother and
deter the object of her lust, the devilish, mouse-like king Claudius,
thus killing two mice with one trap (161). Perhaps no audience
member could hold all of “these theological and pharmaceutical
associations in a kaleidoscopic response to one allusion,”
but the theatrical experience improves in relation to the degree
of knowledge (161-62). And “this learning impresses us with
the unfathomable complexity of Hamlet’s mind and his heart”
(162).
[ top ]
Jardine, Lisa. “‘No
offence i’ th’ world’: Hamlet and Unlawful
Marriage.” Uses of History:
Marxism, Postmodernism and the Renaissance. Ed. Francis
Barker, Peter Hume, and Margaret Iverson. Essex Symposia: Literature/Politics/Theory.
Manchester: Manchester UP, 1991. 123-39. [Reprinted in David Scott
Kastan’s Critical Essays on Shakespeare’s Hamlet
(1995).]
FEMINISM / GERTRUDE / NEW HISTORICISM
While distinguishing its approach from “retrospective
critical activity” (126), this essay sets out “to provide
a historical account which restores agency to groups hitherto
marginalised or left out of what counts as historical explanation—non-élite
men and all women” (125). In Hamlet, Gertrude’s
marriage to Claudius appears “unlawful” by the early
modern period’s standards, and “it deprives Hamlet of
his lawful succession” (130). Gertrude “has participated
in the remarriage—has (literally) alienated her son,
and Old Hamlet’s name” (135). In denying Gertrude exoneration,
“we have recovered the guilt surrounding her as a condition
of her oppression”: “women are not permanently
in the object position, they are subjects. To be always object and
victim is not the material reality of woman’s existence, nor
is it her lived experience” (135).
[ top ]
Kusunoki, Akiko. “‘Oh
most pernicious woman’: Gertrude in the Light of Ideas on
Remarriage
in Early Seventeenth-Century England.” Hamlet and Japan.
Ed. Yoshiko Uéno. Hamlet Collection 2. New York:
AMS, 1995. 169-84.
FEMINISM / GERTRUDE / NEW HISTORICISM
Contending that Shakespeare’s original audience
would have viewed the Queen as “a potent figure in her flouting
of patriarchal dictates through her remarriage,” this reading
of Hamlet “examines the significance of the representation
of Gertrude in the context of society’s changing attitudes
towards a widow’s remarriage in early seventeenth-century
England” (170). Gertrude’s remarriage “demonstrates
an interesting possibility of female agency” that contributes
to the undermining of residual cultural values in the play (173).
Religious and literary sources of the Elizabethan period (e.g.,
Characters, The Widow’s Tears) reflect “dominant
sentiments against a widow’s remarriage,” but historical
research shows the social reality that upper class widows often
remarried (175). Their independence and ability to choose a new
mate “presented a contradiction to patriarchal ideology”
and “posed a radical threat to the existing social structure”
(176). But changing attitudes were also emerging during this period:
Puritans started to argue the benefits of a widow’s remarrying,
and Montaigne’s Essays proposed an “utterly
realistic understanding of human nature”—particularly
of female sexuality (179-80). In this light, the marriage between
Claudius and Gertrude “might not have seemed to some members
of the Elizabethan audience particularly reprehensible” (179).
Although Hamlet succeeds in desexualizing his mother in the closet
scene, Gertrude maintains her own authority by continuing to love
Claudius while denying his order not to drink from the chalice (180).
Her “attitude to her remarriage points to the emergent forces
in the changing attitude towards female sexuality in early seventeenth-century
England” (180).
[ top ]

Loberg, Harmonie. “Queen Gertrude: Monarch, Mother, Murderer.”
Atenea 24.1 (June 2004): 59-71.
FEMINISM / GERTRUDE / OPHELIA’S
MURDER(ER)
Using
behavioral research and feminist theory, this article proposes that
Queen Gertrude is involved in Ophelia’s mysterious “drowning.” It
discusses strategies of human aggression (e.g., indirect, verbal),
debunks resilient sex/gender stereotypes (e.g., the weaker sex), and
uncovers textual evidence (e.g., Gertrude’s dying with all of the
play’s male murderers, her marital and psychological union with King
Claudius, the suspicious drowning report scene). While arguing the
Queen’s guilt, this study also maintains that Gertrude is innocence
of accusations that a “lustful libido” motivates her hasty marriage
to Claudius (63); “rather, the need to secure her roles as monarch,
mother, and wife seems the primary catalyst in her decision”
(63-64). Unfortunately, Ophelia poses a threat “to of the Queen’s
roles. Her presence destabilizes the social order of the caste
system, and ‘her father’s death’ is a catalyst for the
political revolt against the throne (emphasis added 4.5.77). Ophelia
also endangers the Queen’s title of mother with the potential of
Hamlet’s yet-unborn child” (67). “The Queen’s hostility towards
Ophelia initially appears through sophisticated strategies of
aggression, but the increasing dangers force stronger defenses.
Whether resulting from physical action or ethical stagnation, the
Queen is culpable in the death of Ophelia” (68). After challenging
the dogma used to exonerate Gertrude (e.g., genre definitions,
suicide preference, lack of confession), this article asks, “are we
capable of evaluating the evidence against Gertrude without being
influenced by her sex/gender? Can we escape stereotypes and social
myths? Are we ready to acknowledge the awesome paradox of
femaleness: the simultaneous potential for birth and death?” (70).
[
top ]

O’Brien, Ellen J. “Mapping
the Role: Criticism and the Construction of Shakespearean
Character.” Shakespearean Illuminations: Essays in Honor
of Marvin Rosenberg. Ed. Jay L. Halio and Hugh Richmond.
Newark: U of Delaware P, 1998. 13-32.
GERTRUDE
To gain an improved understanding of Gertrude’s
potentiality, this essay relies on “role-criticism,”
“a more open-ended and more self-conscious approach to the
production of meaning than traditional character criticism”
(19). Patterns and shifts present important indications in this
approach, as the closet scene demonstrates: all of the Queen’s
habits of behavior and speech change around this scene (21). For
example, she begins to use language that shifts responsibility
(e.g., Ophelia is not responsible for her drowning—“an
envious sliver” and clothes are to blame) (22); and her
entrances/exits no longer coincide with those of Claudius (23).
While the overriding implication is that Gertrude shifts her devotion
from her husband to her son, many maintain that Gertrude’s
“obsession” with the King remains intact after the
closet scene because the Queen physically defends him from Laertes
(24). But the context of mob rioting implies “a moment when
political forces rather than individual subjectivities are being
embodied on the stage” (27). Although “it is important
to include the anomalous moments in our mapping of the role, it
does not follow that they should be regarded as the key to the
construction of character” because “mapping is perhaps
most valuable as a means of discouraging closure on ‘character’”
(28).
[ top ]
Ouditt, Sharon. "Explaining
Woman's Frailty: Feminist Readings of Gertrude." Hamlet.
Ed. Peter J. Smith and Nigel Wood. Theory in Practice. Buckingham:
Open UP, 1996. 83-107.
FEMINISM / GERTRUDE
After discussing the premises of (and problems within)
feminism, this essay examines three feminist perspectives of Gertrude
and "the interpretive possibilities that they present":
Rebecca Smith's "A Heart Cleft in Twain," an example of
"reading as a woman"; Jaqueline Rose's "Sexuality
in the Reading of Shakespeare: Hamlet and Measure for
Measure," an example of psychoanalytic criticism; and
Lisa Jardine's Still Harping on Daughters an example of
materialistic, feminist criticism (87). Each perspective is summarized,
highlighting strengths and weaknesses, and is used as a launching
pad for broader discussions. For example, Smith's article suffers
from its passé political agenda, which views Gertrude as
a nurturing-non-fictional-persona and raises questions about textual
gaps being filled by critics/audiences/readers with ulterior motives;
but it also leads to questions of Gertrude's guilt. Together, the
three representatives "form part of a changing cultural and
critical history" and reflect the "continuing project"
of feminism (105).
[ top ]

Pennington, Michael. Hamlet:
A User’s Guide. New York: Limelight Editions, 1996.
CLAUDIUS / GERTRUDE / GHOST / HAMLET / HORATIO /
OPHELIA / PERFORMANCE / POLONIUS
Framed by introductory and concluding chapters
that narrate personal experience as well as insight, this monograph
“is only in the slightest sense a history of productions”—“really
imitating a rehearsal” (22). The first chapter focuses on
the action by following the script “line by line”
in the style of “a naive telling of the story” which
can “often provoke a discovery” (22). As in “most
productions,” the “script” is an “accumulated
version”: a combination of elements “from the Second
Quarto and the Folio and any number of later versions, with occasional
mischievous forays into the First (‘Bad’) Quarto”
(24). Act and scene designations are replaced by days to avoid
confusion and “to draw attention to the fact that, while
five separate days of action are presented, Shakespeare’s
manipulation of ‘double time’ is so skilled that you
can believe that several months have passed by between the beginning
and the end” (23). The chapter on Hamlet’s
characters comes second because one should not “make assumptions
about character until the action proves them” (22). Characters
are approached in groups, such as “The Royal Triangle”
(Claudius/the Ghost/Gertrude) and “The Commoners”
(players/gravediggers/priest). Then attention shifts to Hamlet.
After discussing the demands of casting and rehearsing the role
of Hamlet, the second chapter describes the excitement of opening
night and the energizing relationship an actor shares with the
audience. Although challenging, playing the role of Hamlet “will
verify you: you will never be quite the same again” (193).
[ top ]
Ratcliffe, Stephen. What Doesnt
Happen in Hamlet: The Queens Speech. Exemplaria
10 (1998): 123-44.
AUDIENCE RESPONSE / GERTRUDE / OPHELIA'S MURDER(ER)
With a concentrated focus on Gertrudes report of Ophelias
drowning, this article explores how something that doesnt
happen in Hamlet happens, how action that takes place off stage
happens in the words the play uses to perform it (125). The underlying
hypothesis is that the drowning report suggests Gertrudes involvement
with Ophelias murder. Every word of the speech receives meticulous
dissection and analysisfrom the opening word there, which
directs the audiences attention to the plays exterior, to
the last word, as Ophelia vanishes in a muddy death. Plural
meanings implied by audible homonyms and stark shifts in verbal descriptions
appear when the progression of the lines is slowed to a snails
pace. As each studied word provides suggestion and direction to the
audience, a case against the Queen builds. For example, the language
of flowers used by Gertrude in the drowning report and by Ophelia
in her madness creates a relationship that in effect places them
in close proximity to each other, as the first is the speaker
and the latter becomes the object of her gaze, the person she
herself [Gertrude] watched beside the stream (130-31). Although
the critic humbly acknowledges the inability to prove (or disprove)
speculations about off stage events, a singular certainty remains: Gertrude,
as the reporter of Ophelias demise, removes herin
effect kills herfrom the play (144). Ophelias death
provides a paradigm of all off stage events, in a world of words
called the theater (144).
[ top ]

Roberts, Katherine. The
Wandering Womb: Classical Medical Theory and the Formation of Female
Characters in Hamlet. Classical and Modern Literature:
A Quarterly 15 (1995): 223-32.
FEMINISM / GERTRUDE / NEW HISTORICISM / OPHELIA
This essay approaches wombsickness (a.k.a. hysteria) as a condition,
described early in patriarchal Western culture, [which] has been a literary
motif from classical to modern literature (223). Evidence spanning
from Greek medical theories to the doctrines of sixteenth-century physicians
testifies to the belief that the female womb has physiological needs
(e.g., sexual intercourse); left unmet, these demands result in hysteria.
Simultaneously, stringent social codes of the Renaissance restricted
female sexuality. A patriarchal culture defined womensocially
and medicallyby their relationships to men. Ophelia and Gertrude
suffer classic symptoms of wombsickness. As a young girl of marriageable
age and emotional instability, Ophelia is a prime candidate for wombsickness.
She has been mentally and physically preparing herself for marriage/sex
with Hamlet; but in the loss of all male figures to guide and support
her, Ophelia becomes completely vulnerable to her own femaleness
(229). Gertrude also suffers symptoms of hysteria, according to Hamlets
account of a woman whose physiology apparently required frequent
intercourse (230). In the absence of her original husband to sate
and govern her sexual energies, Gertrude is easily seduced, and her
disorderly behavior damages the society. As her natural guardian,
Hamlet must intervene to constrain herhence the closet
scene (231). While Gertrude properly responds to his chastising by transferring
her allegiance from Claudius to Hamlet, and in a sense recovering from
her wombsickness, it is too late to prevent the destruction of the thrones
inhabitants. This article makes no definitive claims about Shakespeares
intentions but notes that Renaissance literature reflects and
reinforces previously developed concepts of women, bringing those
concepts into the twentieth century (232).
[ top ]

Ronk, Martha C. Representations of Ophelia.
Criticism 36 (1994): 21-43.
ART / GERTRUDE / NEW HISTORICISM / OPHELIA / PSYCHOANALYTIC
Perceiving Ophelia as a mix of emblem and the projection of others,
this dense article sets out to discover what Ophelias representation
represents by focusing on the report of her drowning (23). Emblematic
and allegorical characteristics of the speech reveal some insight into
Opheliathe means particular to a historical period when the
emblematic was a received mode of perceiving the world (27). But
like emblem books of the period, the combination of the visual and verbal
still leaves much unarticulated. Another component in the speech is
the speaker, Queen Gertrude, who becomes an appropriate substitute for
Ophelia based on their shared gender and roles within the patriarchy.
While Gertrude offers a dispassionate description of the
drowning (29), she also becomes linked to Ophelias passive volition.
The questioning of Gertrudes involvement in Ophelias death
(and Hamlet Sr.s) provides reiteration of an insistent question
within the play: what it means not to know what is going on
(31). As Gertrude leisurely relates Ophelias demise,
this ekphrastic moment presents a brief stillness within
the play before the plot rushes to tragic fulfillment (32). The resulting
ramifications elicit contemplation from the audience and move Ophelia
out of narrative and into some cosmic order
(34). As emblem (and myth) Ophelia possesses the capacity to arouse
fear, referring to Freuds The Uncanny. Her ekphrastic
presence implies the impossibility of more than seeing what
the viewer could not have seen . . . to an audience intent
on viewing what is not there (38).
[ top ]

Rosenberg, Marvin. The Masks of Hamlet.
Newark: U of Delaware P, 1992.
AUDIENCE RESPONSE / CLAUDIUS / GERTRUDE / GHOST / HAMLET / HORATIO
/ LAERTES / OPHELIA / PERFORMANCE / POLONIUS
Combining literary scholarship with interpretive performances, this
monograph promises "a way to listen to and grasp the complex tones
of Hamlet and the other characters" (x). Chapters follow the chronological
order of the play, pausing to "discuss the important characters
as they appear" (12). For example, the first chapter explores the
opening scene's setting and events, as well as the variations staged
in performances; the examination of this scene is briefly suspended
for chapters on Horatio and the Ghost but continues in chapter four.
This monograph clarifies dilemmas and indicates "the choices that
have been made by actors and critics," but its actor-readers must
decide for themselves (xi): "I believe this book will demonstrate
that each actor-reader of you who engages with Hamlet's polyphony will
uniquely experience the tones that fit your own polyphony" (x).
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Shand, G. B. Realising Gertrude: The Suicide
Option. Elizabethan Theatre XIII. Ed. A. L. Magnusson and
C. E. McGee. Toronto: Meany, 1994. 95-118.
FEMINISM / GERTRUDE / PERFORMANCE
This article uses an actorly exploration of Hamlet
to account for how an apparent subtextual subversion of the script
[Gertrudes conscious act of suicide] might actually have its birth
not in wilful actorly or directorly self-indulgence, but in close and
honest realisation of the textual evidence (99). Gertrude exists
in a male-dominated world, where she is commanded by males and offered
no privacy. Her limited ability to speak does not reflect ignorance,
as several critics have contended, but the Renaissances expectations
of the female gender. These social constraints produce in Gertrude an
impacted condition, a state of painfully ingrown pressure to react
(106). Meanwhile, an astute Gertrude begins to recognize her sin in
an incestuous marriage, as well as her inadvertent responsibility for
the murder of Hamlet, Sr. and all subsequent events (e.g., Polonius
death, Ophelias madness). The Mousetrap guarantees consequential
guilt, which appears evident in the closet scene. While Polonius
murder suggests her association between guilt and death, Gertrudes
description of Ophelias drowning marks a personal desire for death.
This alert Gertrude cannot miss the development of an alliance between
Claudius and Laertes, the charge of murderer-with-poison against the
King, the tension among the males, nor the tainted cup offered to Hamlet
during the duel. She consciously drinks the poisoned wine after having
been denied virtually any other independent action from the beginning
of the play (118).
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Stanton, Kay. "Hamlet's Whores." New
Essays on Hamlet. Ed. Mark Thornton Burnett and John Manning. Hamlet
Collection 1. New York: AMS, 1994. 167-88.
FEMINISM / GERTRUDE / HAMLET / LAERTES / OPHELIA
This interpretation explores all the variations of whore-dom in Hamlet.
The women are not the only ones prostituted. Like Ophelia, Hamlet is
"'whored' by the father": "The older generation incestuously
prostitutes the innocence of the younger" (169). Further examples
include Polonius prostituting Laertes and Reynaldo with plans of spying
and Claudius, the "symbolic father," similarly misusing Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern (169). But the victims are not entirely innocent either.
Hamlet "whores" the theater and its actors--"his great
love"--by perverting artistic purpose and integrity (173), and
the play-within-the-play "whores him as he has whored it, making
him no longer one of the innocent, but one of the 'guilty creatures'
at and in the play" (185). Laertes misuses his favorite pastime,
fencing, to destroy his perceived enemy (180). The duel, "a gruesome
perversion of the sex act" complete with phalluses and pudendum
(181), leaves a dying Hamlet to whore Horatio, Fortinbras to whore Hamlet's
story, and a new "bawd" to reestablish the patriarchy (182).
Because these males insist on a binary opposition between genders, ever
fearing womanly characteristics within themselves, they project their
"whorishness" onto female targets, covering over masculine
violence (178). The closet scene exemplifies this technique: after Hamlet
murders Polonius, Gertrude's "supposed sin is made to overshadow
his actual sin and somehow to justify it" (179). Only in death
does Ophelia escape the whore image, but she becomes the "worshipped
Madonna as Hamlet and Laertes can then safely whore their own self-constructed
images of pure love for her as rationale for violence against each other"
(179). The whoring consumes the play, as Hamlet "'whores'
Hamlet the prince to be the organ for its art" (183).
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Uéno, Yoshiko. “Three
Gertrude’s: Text and Subtext.” Hamlet and Japan.
Ed. Yoshiko Uéno.
Hamlet Collection 2. New York: AMS, 1995. 155-68.
AUDIENCE RESPONSE / GERTRUDE / MYTHIC CRITICISM / NEW
HISTORICISM
This essay examines “ambiguities inherent in Hamlet,
or gaps between the text and subtext, with special attention to Gertrude’s
representation” (156). Rather than possessing autonomy, the Queen
exists only in relation to Claudius and Hamlet; she also refuses to
choose between the two men, revealing “her malleability”
(158). Hence, the lack of critical appreciation of Gertrude seems understandable.
Although the closet scene should offer the greatest opportunity for
insight into Gertrude’s character, it leaves too many unanswered
questions: does she know of Claudius’ involvement in Hamlet, Sr.’s
death? Is she guilty of infidelity with Claudius before this murder?
Further uncertainties are raised by the scene’s presentation of
two Gertrudes: “Gertrude herself and the Gertrude seen from Hamlet’s
perspective” (161). Such confusion leads today’s audiences
to share in Hamlet’s confrontation “with the disintegration
of reality” (162). But the original audience at the Globe may
have had the advantages of after-images, preconceived notions of Hamlet
informed by myth and legend. A survey of plausible literary sources
(e.g., Historiae Danicae, Agamemnon, Histoires
tragiques), with emphasis on the evolving “transformations
of Gertrude,” presents “a wide range of variants”
that Elizabethan audiences may have drawn on to resolve the ambiguities
struggled with today (166).
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All information Copyright © 2002-2007 Harmonie Blankenship
Contact the author at
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