Gabriela Tovar

2017-04-06

Hamlet

1. Many Shakespeare scholars consider the characters of Gertrude and Ophelia to be weak, even
for female characters in Shakespeare. Do you agree or not? Why or why not?

When we are introduced to Gertrude, we see that Hamlet has negative feelings about her, as
she married his uncle as soon as the king died. She is described as an adulterous and incestuous
woman. Even her ex husband speaks about her as “O most wicked speed, to post With such
dexterity to incestuous sheets! ”. In the case of Ophelia, she does not have a voice or say since the
beginning of the play. Her father Polonius and his brother Laertes tell her what to do with her life.
For example, when Laertes is leaving, he tells her things such as “For Hamlet and the trifling of his
favor, Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood, A violet in the youth of primy nature, Forward, not
permanent (…) ” and much more. The same happens with his father. Here we can see how
powerless they may seem, and that may be the reason why academic writers usually consider them
weak. However, I personally believe that this is not true, as I consider that Ophelia and Gertrude’s
actions show how much power they had in this story.

At the beginning of the play we can see that Ophelia’s character does not seem have power
over her life. As I stated before, her brother tells her what to do and her father does that as well.
Even Hamlet does that too! However, it is not until she goes crazy that she gets power over her life.
She sings songs and tells everyone what she thinks. She even gives Gertrude and Claudius a flower
that symbolises their adultery, saying “There’s fennel for you, and columbines”. As she could not
take care of her life before, becoming insane is the best opportunity she has to do something with
her life. When she kills herself is the highest sign we have that she took control with her life and
finally did what she pleased with it. Additionally, the moment she chooses to kill herself is a key
action in the story, as it triggers Laertes’ thirst for vengeance with Hamlet. Also it shows how
strong Ophelia was, because when we talk about suicide, it is a pretty hard action to complete. Even
Hamlet knows that, and decides not to do it in his “To be or not to be” speech. Ophelia managed to
be braver than Hamlet in this case, as she was strong enough to kill herself.

In Gertrude’s case, I think the best example we have of her being empowered is in the final
scene, in which in my opinion, she stops Hamlet from drinking the poison that Claudius prepared
for him. As we saw it in the moderns versions of Hamlet, like in Hamlet (2000) or in David
Tennant’s version of Hamlet, Gertrude’s sacrifice at the end makes herself redeem somehow. With
her actions, all the bad things she did before could be forgiven when she saved her son from dying
in such a dishonourable way. I think it is a tough decision to take away your life in order to save
your son, so in this point of view Gertrude ends up being a really strong character though she only
shows it at the closing scene. With this examples I support my belief that the female characters in
this play are not as weak as they seem to be, although we can find stronger characters in other
Shakespeare’s plays, such as Juliet from Romeo & Juliet, or Viola in the Twelfth Night.

2. After speaking to the ghost, Hamlet decides to pretend he is mad. Why does he decide to do
that? What are his ends? Does it work? At the end, has Hamlet really gone mad or is he still
pretending?

First of all, Hamlet is not a murderer. He is a young boy who was conceited with the
mission of killing his uncle; however, he knows his limits and is aware he can not do that by being
the Hamlet he has always been. In order to become the murderer his father wants him to be, he must
pretend to be insane. As people start talking about the nonsense he does or says, they start thinking
of him as a mentally ill boy. Therefore, when the time to kill Claudius comes, people won’t judge
him or punish him that much. In the play he is supposed to pretend he is mad, and evidence
suggests that he’d been pretending indeed, as he tells Horatio: “But come, Here, as before, never, so
help you mercy, How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself (…), That you, at such times seeing me,
never shall— (…) to note that you know aught of me. This not to do, so grace and mercy at your
most need help you, Swear. ”.
However, I believe that he became one with the character he was playing. The result of this
was him becoming truly crazy. What could have triggered it could have been the encounter with the
ghost of his father, the backstabbing he received from the people he loved, or even genetics. A
combination of all of these could have lead Hamlet to really become insane.

The conversation Hamlet has with his father leaves him speechless. This is a crucial moment
in the story as it makes Hamlet rethink about everything he knows. A close encounter with a ghost
could lead anyone to madness, and even more if it’s your dead father. This could have been the
push Hamlet needed to lose his mind. At first he is grieving because of his father’s death and
mother’s early marriage. He is mentally weak, so as soon as he sees the ghost it triggers his
madness. Additionally, another reason why I think that he is truly insane is because he was betrayed
by the people he loved, and this hopelessness he felt could have only be saved by madness. Ophelia
lied to him, his mother betrayed him by marrying the killer of his father, and he has to put up with
his uncle calling him “son”. The way I see it, there was no other choice for him to survive rather
than killing himself or letting madness empower him.

Finally, another reason why I believe he is truly mad, is because of his genetics. Even
though Shakespeare did not know about genetics and how family traits affect people, he managed to
create characters with a huge psychological background. For instance, in a psychological point of
view we could say that Hamlet has got some paranoid, schizophrenic and antisocial traits. If we take
a look to his family, his father was a strong warrior and his uncle a greedy murderer. This
characteristics that both of them had could have mixed and synthesise in young Hamlet. Therefore,
the ghost could have triggered Hamlet’s traits that had been hiding all along inside of him. To
resume, being crazy for Hamlet was being strong; it empowered him. Craziness is what made him
see clear who was on his side and who was not. It granted him the power to speak truly and act
against the ones he hated. And again, it is what gave him the strength to become a murderer,
something that he haven’t ever thought about before. As his mission was to kill his uncle, he
completes it at the end by losing his mind.