Hamlet: Gertrude

Why, she would hang on him as if increase of

appetite had grown by what it fed on

Hamlet, Act 1 Scene 2

Frailty,

thy name is woman!

Hamlet, Act 1 Scene 2

O, most wicked speed, to post

with such dexterity to such incestuous sheets!

Hamlet, Act 1 Scene 2

Won to his shameful lust

the will of my most seeming-virtuous queen

Ghost, Act 1 Scene 5

Leave her to heaven, and the thorns that in her

bosom lodge to prick and sting her

Ghost, Act 1 Scene 5

O most pernicious

woman!

Hamlet, Act 1 Scene 5

I will speak daggers to

her, but use none

Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 2

You are the Queen, your husband’s brother’s

wife, and (would it were not so) you are my mother

Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 4

Let me wring your heart; for so I shall if it be

made of penetrable stuff

Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 4

If damned custom have not brazed it so that it

be proof and bulwark against sense

Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 4

You cannot call it love, for at your age

the heyday in the blood is tame

Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 4

O shame, where is the blush? Rebellious hell,

if thou canst mutine in a matron’s bones

Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 4

O, step between her and her fighting

soul. Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works.

Ghost, Act 3 Scene 4

Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed, pinch

wanton on your cheek [..] and let him, for a pair or reechy kisses.

Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 4

My mother. Father and mother is man and wife,

man and wife is one flesh, and so, my mother

Hamlet, Act 4 Scene 3

Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her,

let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come

Hamlet, Act 5 Scene 1

The instant burst of clamour that she made, (unless things mortal

move them not at all), would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven, and passion in the gods

First Player, Act 2 Scene 2

None wed the second

but who killed the first

Player Queen, Act 3 Scene 2

A second time I kill my husband

dead, when second husband kisses me in bed

Player Queen, Act 3 Scene 2

The lady doth

protest too much, methinks

Gertrude, Act 3 Scene 2

Therefore our sometime sister, now our

queen, th’imperial jointress to this warlike state

Act 1 Scene 2

I am still possessed of those effects for which

I did murder: my crown, my own ambition, and my queen

Claudius, Act 3 Scene 3

Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother’s hand, of

life, of crown, of queen at once dispatched

Ghost, Act 1 Scene 5

My virtue or my plague, be it either which, she

is so conjunctive to my life and soul that [..] I could not but by her

Claudius, Act 4 Scene 7

I doubt it is no other but the main — his father’s

death and our o’erhasty marriage

Act 2 Scene 2

H: Almost as bad, good mother, as kill a king

and marry with his brother G: As kill a king?

Act 3 Scene 4

What act that roars so loud

and thunders in the index?

Gertrude, Act 3 Scene 4

Thou turn’st my eyes into my very soul, and there

I see such black and grained spots as will not leave their tinct

Gertrude, Act 3 Scene 4

To live in the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,

stewed in corruption, honeying and making love over the nasty sty.

Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 4

These words like

daggers enter my ears

Gertrude, Act 3 Scene 4

Nothing at all; yet

all that is I see

Gertrude, Act 3 Scene 4

Mother, for love of grace, lay not that flattering

unction to your soul that not your trespass but my madness speaks.

Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 4

It will but skin and film the ulcerous place, whiles

rank corruption, mining all within, infects unseen.

Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 4

“Mad as the sea

and the wind, when both contend which is mightier”

Gertrude, Act 4, Scene 1

To my sick soul [..] each toy seems prologue to some great

amiss. So full of artless jealousy is guilt, it spills itself in fearing to be spilt.

Gertrude, Act 4 Scene 5

How cheerfully on the false trail they cry! O

this is counter, you false Danish dogs!

Gertrude, Act 4 Scene 5

He’s fat

and scant of breath.

Gertrude, Act 5 Scene 2

The queen carouses to

thy fortune, Hamlet

Gertrude, Act 5 Scene 2

Her garments, heavy with their drink, pulled the

poor wretch from her melodious lay to muddy death

Gertrude, Act 4 Scene 7

Sweets to the sweet, farewell. I hoped thou

shouldst been my Hamlets wife.
Gertrude, Act 5 Scene 1

I thought thy bride-bed to have decked, sweet

maid, and not t’have strewed thy grave.

Gertrude, Act 5 Scene 1

O my dear Hamlet — the drink, the drink —

I am poisoned.

Gertrude, Act 5 Scene 2

Wretched queen

adieu

Hamlet, Act 5 Scene 2

“The most enduring characterisation of Gertrude—

as shamelessly sensual and shallow — is provided by Hamlet and the Ghost. - T. Tubb

Tubb argues that though Gertrude is characterised

as ‘lustful’ and ‘self-indulgent’, she does not confirm nor deny this belief.

According to Tubb, Gertrude’s role has traditionally been seen as

passive, with critics discounting her ‘few, short speeches’ as the beliefs of the men around her.

Gertrude’s ‘enigmatic’ nature means that ‘her

character struggles to define itself against the Hamlets’ explicit opening opinions.’ - Tubb

According to Tubb, Gertrude’s death, revealing

Claudius as her killer, finally gives Hamlet the motivation to act.

According to Tubb, the discovery of OH’s murder causes her to have

a moral awakening; the former ‘moral gray area’ of her “o’erhasty marriage” becomes a “black and grained spot”

The play was designed “to catch the

conscience of the queen” — Adelman

“We can suppose that Gertrude, keenly aware of loss of power through the

death of Old Hamlet, might seek to stabilise her precarious political position” — Gunns