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[Unregistered]

What you think mothers cannot be both producers of children and still have lust? The problem with Gertrude is that she is lusting after what she should not accordign to generally accepted views of family edicate. Your interpreatin is of course, one way to look at what might well be Shakespeare most complex characters, and most definately his most complex female character. The question of her realism is another matter. Shakespeare generally portrayed his women to be simple and weak minded and at the whims of the Elizabethean humors...of which there were four; melancholia, cholera, sanguine and phlegmatic.

[Unregistered]

The Queen's lust is one of the most important things in the play...you can't just take it out. The play wouldn't make sense...

[Unregistered]

I think that Shakespeare creates Gertrude as a mother and a lustful character because Hamlet is lusting for his mother. I have recently written a paper on the Oedipus complex and how it relates to Hamlet and all of the evidence is there. Gertrude is created as a lustful character because that is how she is seen in Hamlet's eyes.

[cireena]

It might help you to understand not just Gertrude but other Shakespearean females if you could get hold of a bit of background reading of how women were viewed in Shakespeare's time. For instance John Knox wrote a pamphlet in the mid-sixteenth century which, as a woman, I find very distressing to read but which voices what was public opinion for the majority at that time. Remember that England was Christian and most people fundamentalists. Women were not allowed to be educated, to speak in public, to go out alone etc. because Christian doctrine taught that a woman, Eve, was responsible for humankind's downfall and therefor all women were considered to have no control over their passions. If you typed in "John Knox" and/or "The Monstrous Regiment of Women" onto a search engine you should get some idea of how women were viewed by the majority.

[sumit gared]

I'm an engineering student in india(allahabad).Hemlet was one of the finest work Iever read but it could be even better if queen were not portrayed simultaneously a mother & a lust ful character.