Shakespeare’s tragedy, Hamlet, presents ten male characters for every one female character. The only prominent female characters are two: Ophelia, Laertes’ sister and Polonius’ daughter; and Gertrude, the queen and wife of Claudius and mother of Hamlet. This essay will explore the character, role, and importance of Gertrude.
Prince Hamlet initially appears in the play dressed in solemn black. His mother, Gertrude, is apparently disturbed by this and requests of him:
Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off,
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
Do not for ever with thy vailed lids
Seek for thy noble father in the dust:
Thou know’st ’tis common; all that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity. (1.2)
The queen obviously considers her son’s dejection to result from his father’s demise. She joins in with the king in requesting Hamlet’s stay in Elsinore rather than returning to Wittenberg to study. Respectfully the son replies, “I shall in all my best obey you, madam.” So at the outset the audience notes a decidedly good relationship between Gertrude and those about her in the drama, even though Hamlet’s “suit of mourning has been a visible and public protest against the royal marriage, a protest in which he is completely alone, and in which he has hurt his mother” (Burton “Hamlet”). Hamlet’s first soliloquy expresses his anger at the quickness of his mother’s marriage to Claudius, and its incestuousness since it is between family: “Frailty, thy name is woman! . . . .”
When the ghost talks privately to Hamlet, he learns not only about the murder of his father, but also about th…
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…the climax approaches, Osric invites Hamlet to a rapier contest with Laertes. During the match Gertrude drinks from the cup poisoned by the king to kill Hamlet. As she dies, she speaks, “The drink, the drink! I am poisoned,” which words motivate Laertes to confess that the king is behind the treachery. Thus he dies by Hamlet’s hand. Then Hamlet and Laertes die, wounded by the poisoned sword meant for Hamlet. Thus, once again, Gertrude is pivotal, is crucial for plot development.
WORKS CITED
Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms, 7th ed. New York: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1999.
Burton, Philip. “Hamlet.” In The Sole Voice. New York: The Dial Press, 1970. http://www.freehomepages.com/hamlet/other/burton-hamlet.htm No pag.
Jorgensen, Paul A. “Hamlet.” http://www.freehomepages.com/hamlet/other/jorg-hamlet.htm No pag.
charant Characterization in Sophocles’ Antigone
Antigone– Characterization
This essay will illustrate the types of characters depicted in Sophocles’ tragic drama, Antigone, whether static or dynamic, flat or round, and whether portrayed through the showing or telling technique.
Martin Heidegger in “The Ode on Man in Sophocles’ Antigone” explains, in a rather involved theory, the destruction of Creon’s character:
The conflict between the overwhelming presence of the essent as a whole and man’s violent being-there creates the possibility of downfall into the issueless and placeless: disaster. But disaster and the possibility of disaster do not occur only at the end, when a single act of power fails, when the violent one makes a false move; no, this disaster is fundamental, it governs and waits in the conflict between violence and the overpowering. Violence against the preponderant power of being must shatter against being, if being rules in its essence, as physics, as emerging power(98).
The dialogue, action and motivation revolve about the characters in the story (Abrams 32-33).
Werner Jaeger in “Sophocles’ Mastery of Character Development” pays the dramatist the very highest compliment with regard to character development:
The ineffaceable impression which Sophocles makes on us today and his imperishable position in the literature of the world are both due to his character-drawing. If we ask which of the men and women of Greek tragedy have an independent life in the imagination apart from the stage and from the actual plot in which they appear, we must answer, ‘those created by Sophocles, above all others’ (36).
Surely it can be said of Sophocles’ main characters that they grow beyond the two dimension…
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…ment of his edict; he changes after Teiresias’ visit and warning. Ismene and Haemon become dynamic later in the tragedy. Rarely does the dramatist use the chorus to convey information; most of this comes from exchanges of dialogue, which would be the showing technique.
WORKS CITED
Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms, 7th ed. New York: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1999.
Antigone by Sophocles. Translated by R. C. Jebb. no pag.
http://classics.mit.edu/Sophocles/antigone.html
Heidegger, Martin. “The Ode on Man in Sophocles’ Antigone.” In Sophocles: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Thomas Woodard. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966.
Jaeger, Werner. “Sophocles’ Mastery of Character Development.” In Readings on Sophocles, edited by Don Nardo. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 1997.