Gertrude

Gertrude

1. The Queen of Denmark, Hamlet’s mother, recently married to Claudius. Gertrude loves Hamlet deeply, but she is a shallow, weak woman who seeks affection and status more urgently than moral rectitude or truth.

2. Seek for thy noble father in the dust: Thou know'st 'tis common; all that lives must die, Passing through nature to eternity.

   • Don’t forever mourn over your father’s death.
   • Gertrude tries to comfort Hamlet by telling Hamlet that everyone dies eventually, and that his father is in Heaven now. This platitude, that death comes for us all, rarely consoles those who are really grieving for the death of a loved one. That Gertrude herself, the widow, could use it on her own son may suggest how little true grief she feels.