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No Fear Translations of Shakespeare’s plays (along with audio!) and other classic works
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Act 1, Scene 2
Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted color off,
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
Do not forever with thy vailèd lids
Seek for thy noble father in the dust.
Thou know’st ’tis common. All that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.
Gertrude directs these words to Hamlet in Act 1, Scene 2 in an attempt to comfort him and bring an end to his grief. For his part, Hamlet interprets Gertrude’s lines as evidence that his “cold mother” does not feel any grief about her late husband’s passing. But in his rush to reject his mother’s performance of grief, Hamlet seems not to notice the way her phrase “vailèd lids” implicitly feminizes him. Although the phrase mainly refers to Hamlet’s perpetually downcast eyes, the use of the word “vailèd” references the black veil that a woman would wear over her face while in mourning. Hence Gertrude suggests that her son emasculates himself by continuing to grieve his “noble father.”
Act 1, Scene 5
Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
Against thy mother aught. Leave her to heaven
This quote from the Ghost of Hamlet’s father in Act 1, Scene 5 comes at the end of an exchange between the Ghost and Hamlet in which the Ghost confirms to Hamlet that Claudius and Gertrude conspired against him and murdered him. The Ghost commands Hamlet to take vengeance against Claudius (by killing him), but with these lines he also commands Hamlet to not take any actions against Gertrude, but rather to leave her to God to ultimately punish. The Ghost has inferred that Gertrude was led astray by the conniving Claudius and thus not fully responsible for her horrible actions. This suggests that, despite everything, the Ghost still feels some affection for Gertrude, which is a strong testament to how deeply he loved her, and perhaps to how charming and captivating she is as a person.
Act 3, Scene 2
The lady protests too much, methinks.
Gertrude utters this famous remark in response to Hamlet, who has just asked her how she is enjoying the performance of a play he chose for the resemblance it bears to the real-life events taking place in Elsinore. He hopes Claudius’s and Gertrude’s reactions to the play will reveal whether they conspired to assassinate the former king. The queen in the play earnestly commits herself to her husband, who will soon be murdered. Hamlet interrupts the play at this point to ask his question. Gertrude responds that the Player Queen “protests too much,” meaning that the character speaks too gravely. In Shakespeare’s time, protest meant “to declare solemnly.”
Therefore, Gertrude is implying that the Player Queen doesn’t really mean what she says—her words are too solemn to be believed. Gertrude may be tacitly suggesting that the marriage vow isn’t sacred, in which case the audience could understand her to be defending her remarriage to Claudius.
Act 3, Scene 4
O Hamlet, speak no more!
Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul,
And there I see such black and grainèd spots
As will not leave their tinct.
Gertrude speaks these lines in exasperation in Act 3, Scene 4 in response to Hamlet after he retrains her and forces her to listen to him describe her appalling actions relating to the murder of King Hamlet and her subsequent marriage to King Claudius. She begs him to stop and says that he has succeeded in making her look into her soul (as he’d vowed to do at the start of their confrontation). Finally, she admits that the sins on her soul are so thick and black that they will never be washed away.
This the very coinage of your brain.
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in.
Gertrude utters these lines in Act 3, Scene 4 after the Ghost appears to Hamlet in her chambers, but she is unable to see the Ghost and concludes that her son really has gone mad. This moment introduces a point of ambiguity into the play. If Gertrude were correct about the Ghost being only a manifestation of Hamlet’s madness and not real, then the Ghost saying that Claudius murdered him could not be trusted—except for the fact that in the prior scene, Claudius confessed to the murder. Does this mean that Gertrude is wrong and Hamlet is not mad? Not necessarily is probably the best answer to this question, since it is possible that being confronted by the ghost of his father, being told of his uncle and mother’s guilt, and then being ordered to kill his uncle pushed the already sensitive and melancholy Hamlet into madness.
Regardless of what the invisibility of the Ghost to Gertrude might or might not suggest about Hamlet’s mental state, the question remains about what it means regarding Gertrude. One plausible explanation is that the Ghost chose not to make himself visible to her because he loved her so much when he was alive, and that even her being a party to his murder cannot erase that. Supporting this interpretation is the fact that in its Act 1, Scene 5 appearance the Ghost told Hamlet to “leave her to heaven” (in other words, to leave her punishment to God). Also, there is the fact that the Ghost’s appearance in Act 3, Scene 4 may have been prompted by Hamlet’s harshly rebuking his mother. The Ghost’s clear message to Hamlet in this scene is that he should stop wasting time rebuking Gertrude and focus on killing Claudius.
