Question about Gertrude!!!

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you know at the end of hamlet, when gertrude drinks the wine? Does she drink the poison wine unknowinly or does she do it to save Hamlet? (or is she a bit of an alcohlic hehe). Anyway i want your views on what happens cos i cant decide!

-- Raynor (bullochraynor@hotmail.com), February 03, 2003

Answers

To save Hamlet,she'd only have to spill it all over the floor. So I think she probably does it unknowingly.

-- catherine england (catherine_england@hotmail.com), February 04, 2003.

Yep, I agree with Catherine. I think that once the poison kicks in though, she suddenly realizes what Claudius was up to. Too late to do anything about it. Bummer.

-- Casey (mikken@neo.rr.com), February 05, 2003.

Of course she doesn't do it willingly! What a daft question.

-- Patrick Walker (criesandwhispers666@yahoo.com), February 08, 2003.

I think Gertrude has to be the most selfish and stupid person in the play. No wonder Hamlet makes such harsh generalisations on women as a whole with that silly bitch as a role model. I doubt she would be noble enough to sarifice herself for Hamlet's sake, who cares? What I want to know is....why did she drink out of Hamlet's cup? Didn't she have one of her own?

-- Karen (muttleys_numba1@hotmail.com), August 23, 2003.

i think that she didn't know that the cup had poison, because if she did she wouldn't have drank it, unless she wanted to die. I think that she was just a victim of claudius, she was naive and didn't realized that her husband had killed her first husband and was now trying to kill her son. She was in denial and didn't want to open her eyes to what was going on around her.

-- heureux247 (heureux743@yahoo.com), September 17, 2003.


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