Gertrude is the loving wife and mother in the play, Hamlet. Many say that she is responsible for Hamlet's agony because of her hasty marriage and her ignorance to the murder of her husband and her sons disapproval. Beautiful and warm-hearted, she has no mind of her own, and she seems to be pulled by whatever force is the most powerfully aimed at her. Gertrude seems to be the kind of person who avoids conflict and confrontation as much as she can.. Also, the fact that Claudius carefully hid his crime of killing her husband from her shows how she might have gone about dealing with the crime. When things worked out so that she was able to marry Claudius, however, she was happy and only wanted all the difficulties of the past to be forgotten. Hamlet's refusal to forget the death of his father or to forgive her of incestuously remarrying her dead husbands brother are the only things that stop Gertrude from being perfectly happy. They seem to remind her of the difficult position she is in. If she could only get Hamlet to accept her new husband as his new father, she could completely put away the past and start thinking about the present comfortably. She therefore begs him to remain at Elsinore so that this reconciliation can take place, "I pray thee, stay with us. Go not to Wittenberg." (Act 1, scene 2).
             As she watches her son become more insane as the months pass by, and sees his offending behavior beginning to disturb not only her but also his lover, Opheila, Claudius, and the other members of the court, she begins to become very concerned and unhappy with her son's behavior. She hopes that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern will be able to bring him out of his depression "...And I beseech you instantly to visit My too much changed son." (Act 2, scene 2). Then she wonders of the possibility that Hamlet's "madness" might actually be a result of his love for Ophelia rather than his anger with her, and hopes that Ophelia will be able to cur...