Gertrude's 'Hamlet': In Search of the King of Denmark's Daughter in Shakespeare's Play

Abstract

Gertrude in Hamlet has been commonly characterized as a sheep, a slut, a sexually abusive mother, a fool, and a drunk, both in academic commentary and on stage. She is always a consort. I suggest that Gertrude could be played instead as the bloodline Queen, daughter of the King of Denmark, whose husbands were kings only because they married her. Very rarely has this interpretation surfaced in the literature on Hamlet; almost never in performance. However, the reading is compatible with the text, its origins, and the era in which it was written.

Gertrude has considerable power in the play, especially over Hamlet. This power is usually assumed to be based on her sexuality, and its dynamics helped give rise to the sexual reading of the power a mother has over her son in Freud’s theory of the Oedipus complex. As the bloodline Queen of Denmark, Gertrude’s power would have a very different dynamic. The complications of her position could be rich sources of dramatic interest. Her marriages provide potential fields for conflicts of power, as does her relationship with her son, and with the other characters in the play.

In my thesis I use my response as an actor to locate moments in the text which could do with re-examination, and I use a reading of Gertrude as the bloodline queen to find new meanings in those moments using her consequent power. Through this I find a new story for Gertrude herself, as well as gaining fresh insights into the play as a whole.