Hamlet has not achieved his revenge of killing the king; instead, he lifts the arras to discover that he has killed Polonius. Hamlet bids the man farewell, calling him an “intruding fool”. After the killing of Polonius, Hamlet is the character to have most control over the situation, and although killing someone who he thought to be the king, he is relatively calm.“ I took thee for thy better”.
Whilst Gertrude is probably hysterical or saddened, Hamlet still continues to chide her whilst she is at her lowest and most vulnerable point. “Honeying and making love / Over the nasty sty, --” In this scene, Hamlet is presented as a very egotistical individual and this is shown through the length of his own contributions in the argument. Presenting Hamlet with long soliloquies and more lines is good to show his ego, and his control over his mother. Also, there is this idea that he feels he is more superior to his mother, and thinks he has the right to talk to her the way he does. “Ay, lady, 'twas my word.” Hamlet answers his mothers question harshly, calling her “lady”, instead of mother! Hamlets want to control in the scene is immensely obvious. Several times Gertrude has to ask Hamlet to stop, but he doesn’t until the ghost interrupts him. Hamlet is a performer, an actor, but whom is he acting too?
Gertrude “… Whereon do you look?”
Hamlet: “On him, on him! Look you, how pale he glares!”
Hamlet could well be acting when he says he sees this ghost, a ploy to scare his mother, or to enforce his madness, because the queen obviously cannot see this ‘ghost’.
Although we say this, Hamlet refuses to be called an actor. Gertrude says that Hamlet’s mourning for his father is simply an act. Shakespeare may well have portrayed Hamlet as an actor, through the way he speaks and the way he acts like an artist. This indication adds to the idea that he is a very egotistical person, as if Hamlet thinks of himself as an actor, or a player of God. If he were to think of himself as a ‘player of God’ then Hamlet would have to be very devious and scheming, something that is a strongly presented to us during the play. Even his plan of ‘madness’ must have taken some deep preparation, and it makes us think that if he were that desperate a person to think of such an idea, could he truly be insane? And if Gertrude’s accusations are right that Hamlet only acts his mourning for his father, then Hamlet must be mad to do such a thing. “Seems madam, Nay it is I know not seems” Gertrude is talking to Claudius, claiming that Hamlets mourning for his father is not all that it seems.
Shakespeare has presented Hamlet and his mothers relationship as a very abnormal one throughout the play, and particularly in Act III Scene IV. Their relationship can also be analysed through many different channels, as many of the lines in Shakespeare’s Hamlet can be interpreted in different ways. It seems that this scene could take place on Gertrude’s “enseamed bed”, although there are no stage directions to say this is true. Hamlet says, “My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time”. This phrase can have two meanings. Primarily, ‘pulse’ meaning that they are blood related, but also that as a pair, they are so close their hearts beat together. The ‘Oedipus Complex’ explores sons having a desire to sleep with their mother, consciously or subconsciously. Whether this is true for Hamlet is hard to say, as we have to look at him as a character. Without this scene, it would seem unlikely that Shakespeare had any intentions of suggesting an Oedipal relationship between Hamlet and his mother. Over many years there has been wide debate over the subject of Hamlet and his ‘Oedipus Complex’. We must remember that Hamlet is just a character of a play. The significance of this scene being set in the queens ‘bedroom’ is very important, as Hamlet makes many references to beds in the scene: “In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed / Stew’d”, meaning sweaty and semen-stained, like a prostitutes bed. This sexual language implies that Hamlet could well be talking to a future lover, when it is in fact his own mother. ‘Bedrooms’ are private, and conventionally places of sexual activity, so Shakespeare may well have deliberately presented the two on the bed, or in the bedroom, to suggest their sexual relationship. There are other possibilities that this scene was set in her bedroom. Hamlet hates the idea of his mother’s relationship with his uncle. In the bedroom, he is only made to think about it more.
Still reprimanding his mother for her ‘sins’, Hamlet makes her look at two poignant portraits of the two kings, “counterfeit presentments of two brothers”, his beloved father and his despised Uncle. Hamlet describes the two men to the queen as she looks at the portraits. Hamlet compares his father to Greek and roman mythical characters “Hyperion” and “Mercury”, the former being Titan, son of Uranus and Gaea, and the messenger to gods being the latter. This language that Hamlet uses emphasises his love for his father and to show how much he idolised him. Also, he compares his father with Jove (Jupiter) and Mars, the Great planets. “The front of Jove himself; / An eye like Mars,” In contrast, Hamlet presents his Uncle as nothing but a “mildew’d ear”, diseased and mouldy, nothing more than a parasite. Throughout the play, there is a great amount of imagery on disease, illness and perfection. Disease can be related to Claudius, and his ‘parasite’ antics. ‘Diseased’ is also what Denmark was at the time, corrupt. Illness could well be Hamlet’s madness, or the unhealthy lust for his mother. Hamlet too misses ‘perfection’, when his family were ‘perfect’, and of course when he had his idealized father. He wants to return to the blissful time when all things were paradise for him, his childhood. In Hamlets infamous “Alas, poor Yorrick” speech, he reminisces on the times when his Jester, Yorrick would play with him. “Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment.” Hamlet may be looking for a father figure in his later life, and of course, it would be impossible to have a normal father-son relationship with Claudius. Because he can’t have any type of normal father-son relationship, he may find it hard to relate to his mother properly.
Hamlet questions his mother several times, “Have you got eyes?” implying that she is morally blind, and cannot see what she has done. After punishing her with his words, Gertrude begs him to stop: “O Hamlet, speak no more / These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears”, and it is at this point we can see that Hamlet has both physical and psychological control over his mother. Their relationship at this point is presented like a courting couple, arguing. He even grabs her arm as she goes to leave, showing a more violent, physical and angry side. As Hamlet berates his mother, he is forcing her to confront everything. He demands her attention, when at the same time she is refusing to give him it. Gertrude does not want to look into what she has done, as she pleads Hamlet to stop. At one point, he makes her look into a mirror; a metaphor to show the queen what she is like. “You go not till I set you up a glass”. It is however ambiguous to whether or not Gertrude knew about Claudius killing old Hamlet, and although she sees that Hamlet is so disappointed and disgusted with her, it could be that she cannot see the boundaries that she has broken. (Whether Gertrude does or does not know, she gives into Hamlet, and corrects her mistakes by making an alliance with Hamlet, and asserting her loyalty to her son over her Husband Claudius.) Gertrude must have some loyalty towards her son, as she feels guilty about being with Claudius. Gertrude isn’t an evil woman, merely weak and easily persuaded. She seems happy to be somebody that she is not for the sake of others. One example is that she allows Polonius to eavesdrop on her and her son’s conversation, and she is also easily led into giving in to Hamlet. Ultimately, Gertrude is always, and has always been loyal to her son. Even in the last scene, her last dying words are to her son. “O my dear Hamlet, / The drink, the drink! I am poison'd.“ Gertrude too feels sorry for her son, as in Act II Scene II she speaks: “the poor wretch comes reading”.
The ghost of old Hamlet then appears, although Gertrude cannot see it. The ghost could have been another ploy from Hamlet to make his mother believe that he is mad, but I also think that the Ghost is Hamlet externalising his own thoughts, only showing them in his father’s persona for the audience’s point of view. Shakespeare seems to have crafted the Ghost of old Hamlet as a device, to let audience in to another viewpoint. Gertrude believes that this ghost is a result of his madness. “This very coinage of your brain”, and she believes that his madness stems from the loss of his father, and her relationship with Claudius. “His father's death, and our o'erhasty marriage …”
Hamlets sexual identity and attitude towards the women in the play is obviously abnormal. When he speaks to his mother, he is often foul-mouthed, and explicit. This could merely be used to offend or humiliate his mother, or it could be the only way he can express himself in front of his mother. Talking about your parents sex life in front of your own mother seems very odd, but to Hamlet, it could be the thing that he wishes, for to take Claudius’s place, and let it be him to have the incestuous affair. In the case of his very own father, Hamlet did of course love him, but it was a very idealized love. Hamlet thinks that his father was perfect when in fact he was not. Also, Hamlet idolised his father to an extent where he wanted to be his father, maybe in terms of power, and the possession of his mother, Gertrude.
Hamlets inability to have a successful relationship with Ophelia, his girlfriend, could be a problem created through his supposed lust for his mother. He treats Ophelia with little respect, and subjects her to loathsome verbal abuse, bursting with sexual innuendo. “That’s a fair thought to lie between a maids legs”. In the mousetrap scene, Hamlet talks to Ophelia in this way to appear mad. But not only this, Hamlet carries on to show his immature attitudes towards love when he banters to Rosencratz and Guildenstern. “here’s metal more attractive”. Because of this male, adolescent type behaviour, it seems that Hamlet is not ready for love, and he cannot accept Ophelia’s mature feelings that she has for him, thus their relationship is unstable.
Shakespeare had obviously chosen to present the relationship between Hamlet and his mother with deliberate abnormalities. The aspects from the Oedipus complex and incest are interesting. There seems to be many connections with Denmark being corrupted and diseased, and maybe this is metaphorical for the mother and son’s relationship, incestuous and corrupted. Also, Claudius’s and Gertrude’s relationship is the same, although at the time it wouldn’t have been that abnormal for a King to marry his brother’s wife, especially in Royal families. It was all about keeping money in the family, or keeping a bond, or peace with other relatives. In this case however, and what makes the relationship corrupt is the fact that Claudius killed his own brother. And to Hamlet, Claudius has not only usurped his father’s crown, but also his mother’s bed.
