I do agree that, “As for Hamlet as a religious play, there is a lot more you can talk about”. For instance:
The sin of suicide in, “Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!”; and again in, “Is she to be buried in Christian burial when she wilfully seeks her own salvation?”
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust in “That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once. How the knave jowls it to the ground, as if 'twere Cain's jawbone, that did the first murther! This might be the pate of a Politician, which this [jackass] now o'erreaches; one that would circumvent God?, might it not?”
Originally Posted by
Oracle13
…her lack of moral awareness and general dullness is enough to mark her a bad mother
While Gertrude may well be ‘a bad mother’, you condemn half of motherhood! Her lack of intuition is a common enough personality trait. She notices and deals with all the sensory details of the present. Much less common is a Hamlet, who seeks to understand, interpret and form overall patterns and relationships, and who, with imagination, speculates on possibilities, looking into and forecasting the future.
Although your character may be deemed flawed, your personality traits are at worst a handicap. Gertrude should not be blamed! And least of all, for lacking the wise council of Hamlet’s chauvinistic ghost.
Gertrude has much in her favour: she is likeable, responsive, courageous, ingenuous and loyal. She is protective of Claudius even after Hamlet has set her “up a glass”. Her open engagement with others and sunny sexuality (weakly implied in ‘she would hang on him’, ‘Sweet Gertrude’, ‘how cheerfully my mother looks’ and ‘man and wife is one flesh; and so, my mother’, as well as in the love of Old Hamlet and in Claudius’ enthusiasm for her before and after marriage) are dazzling.