Hamlet Love Triangle

Is Hamlet just a twisted love triangle in some soap opera? In the course of the play Gertrude profusely creates sexual tension, which drives the men in her life to do monstrous things. Though she is only a sex object in the play she is of all their desires consciously or unconsciously. Her character has least amount of dialogue among the major characters she proves to be one of the most important.

Some of the evidence first comes around with the introduction to Hamlet’s Father’s ghost. The Ghost describes vaguely the details of his murder and then goes into a vivid assault on Gertrude’s sexual relationship with Claudius, which he then pushes Hamlet to enact revenge on Claudius for taking his sex object, who causes him much rage and emotional anguish. “Let not the royal bed of Denmark be a couch of luxury and damned incest” (I.v.82-83), but he later on proclaims that Hamlet should not exact revenge on his mother but leave it to heaven. “The ghost expresses (to Gertrude) simultaneous rage, disgust, and protectiveness in his first appearance to Hamlet,”(Smith) which reinforces that the ghost still treats her as his own.

In the second appearance of The Ghost he comes again in the heat of the moment with Gertrude and Hamlet after

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Hamlet in the course of the story tried to find some grain of guilt in her, but did not come very apparent except in two situations. “ Lacan stresses, ‘is not simply that the subject wanted, desired to kill his father and to violate his mother, but that that [desire] is in the unconscious… and there's surely an echo of that in ‘Hamlet,’” (Starks).

Overall in the story Shakespeare was trying to get across that Gertrude although essentially a very non-voluble character she was very essential being one of their main beloved objects of the main three men’s lives. ”The long ‘repressed’ desire to take his father’s place in his mother’s affection is stimulated to unconscious activity by the sight of someone usurping this place exactly as he himself had once longed to do,” (Jones).

An additional one of Gertrude’s obsessive men is Claudius. ”O most wicked speed: to post with dexterity to incestuous sheets,” (I. Her motives aren’t as blatant as Hamlet’s or Claudius. If not for her love for Hamlet Claudius would have done away with Hamlet. Though Hamlet suspects that his mother is guilty for conspiring in his father’s death he can’t find any evidence, which really vexes him.

While there isn’t any obvious evidence of it there is an element of Oedipus mentality going on with Hamlet.

Approximate Word count = 1050
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

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