The story of Hamlet is a very complex story because in the beginning a lot of the plot as already unfolded. It starts off that king Hamlet Sr. has just died. His wife Queen Gertrude has just married his brother Claudius making him the new king of Denmark. King Hamlet’s son Hamlet is left to deal with the situation of his father dieing and not even a month after his mother marries his uncle. In Act 1 scene 5 Hamlet talks to his fathers ghost and the ghost of his father tells him that he had not just died but he had been murder and then the ghost says “The serpent that did sting thy father’s life Now wears his crown.”(act.1 sc.5 line 46-47). The ghost told him that it was his brother, the new king, who killed him while he was sleeping in the orchard. The ghost tells Hamlet to get revenge on King Claudius for what he has done. He tells Hamlet to not kill his mother the ghost says “leave her to heaven” (line 92). This is why I believe that she knew about the murder and was a part of it because the ghost wants her to suffer in the after-life and if she was innocent the ghost wouldn’t want her to be punished for something she didn’t do. There are some other parts in the story that also give the reader the idea that she is not as innocent as she seemed at first.
the scene were Hamlet is in his mothers bedroom and Hamlet is telling her that he is disgusted and that he knows that she knew he was murdered. When he is saying this to her she stops him and says “O Hamlet, speak no more! Thou turn’st my eyes in to my very soul, and there I see such black and grained spots as will not leave their tinct.”(act.3 sc.4 line99-102) if she wasn’t guilty of something I don’t know why she would think that her soul was black. She says this after watching hamlet killing Polonius and if she thinks that she has a black soul then she must have done something really bad and she knew it was bad the whole time. After this I think she didn’t fight when Claudius wants to send Hamlet to England to be killed. She knew hamlet knows that she was in on the plan of killing King Hamlet the whole time. She must think that with Hamlet out of the way no one else will find out about what she did. If she could do this to her son it also makes it not so hard to believe that she could do it to her husband also.
Hamlet puts on the play to trick the king in to showing that he did commit the crime of killing his father. The play is written to act out how the king is killed, Hamlet thinks that if Claudius reacts strangely to the play that he is guilty of the crime. When they are at the play when that scene comes up, Claudius acts the way that Hamlet thought he was going to act and the entire audience had an idea that he could be the killer. If the Queen really didn’t know that Claudius killed her husband from the beginning then she should have gotten some idea at the play. When someone dies unexpectedly and then their brother tries to marry his wife and she doesn’t think that anything is wrong with it, is not a normal reaction to that situation. It shows that she must have been in on the plan or if not she was added to the plan after he had been killed. With all the things that happened and everything that hamlet said to her she should have the truth know about the murder. That fact that she was there the entire time shows that she just turned the other way or that she was in on the plan also.
Gertrude is not just an innocent bystander to this horrible tragedy. She is just as guilty as her new husband maybe not for the act but for knowing about it the whole time and not doing anything about it. She also didn’t help out her own son when she knew he was being sent to his death. She was using who ever she could to make sure that she didn’t get caught so she hide behind Claudius and let him do all the dirty work. In the end Gertrude gets what she deserves when she is poisoned by the man that she helped kill her old husband. The irony is that she was killed by the thing she thought would keep her alive… her new husband.