About Arlene Schulman Expertise I have loved Shakespeare all my life, and as a Stage Director and Actor for over twenty-five years I have had the opportunity to study his work in intimate detail. I would be happy to share my knowledge of his plays. I can also help with acting Shakespeare, working with blank verse, character development, script analysis and interpretation. I don`t have as much knowledge in the area of his sonnets, but I can help to understand their meaning and language. I also have some knowledge of his life and of the Globe theatre where he performed his plays, as well as the Royal Shakespeare Company and his birthplace of Stratford-upon-Avon, and can point you in the direction of some wonderful websites on the subjects as well.
Experience
Organizations SSDC - associate member The Shakespeare Institute (MA Candidate - "Shakespeare & Theatre)
Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas
The Shakespeare Association of America
Question How are some different ways that Hamlet and Gertrude's relationship have been portrayed?
Answer Hi Alex,
One of the wonderful things about Shakespeare's plays is that he gives you strong dialogue but often leaves a huge amount of ambiguity about the motivations of his characters, their backstories, their relationships, and how to interpret that wonderful dialogue. He tells you what people say but not how to say it, what happens, but not how to play those actions. Which is why every performance is always very, very different depending on how the director and actors interpret the characters and their relationships.
Hamlet and Gertrude's relationship has been the subject of a vast number of different interpretions over the years. Of course a relationship is two sided - Hamlets feelings for his mother and Gertrude's feelings for her son - and that leaves room for many variations.
Hamlet has sometimes been portrayed as caring too much for Gertrude in a decidedly unfilial way, sometimes as totally disgusted by her hasty marriage to Claudius. Sometimes he is gentle with her, sometimes steeped in irony, in other productions vicious and violent.
Gertrude has been portrayed sometimes as a caring mother concerned over her son's mental health, sometimes as love-struck new wife whose son is causing trouble with her new husband, sometimes as obsessively torn between her husband and her son.
Some directors have attributed subtle and not so subtle Freudian overtones to their relationship, playing Hamlet and Gertrude almost as lovers - Hamlet Oedipally attracted to Gertrude, protective of her, jealous of her relationship with Claudius and violent when she refuses to leave him; and Gertrude overprotective of Hamlet and obviously torn between protecting her husband and protecting her son.
In some productions Gertrude is even portrayed as deliberately, knowingly drinking from the poisoned goblet at the duel to save Hamlet's life.
In some productions Hamlet is so disgusted with her behavior that he is barely civil to her until their confrontation in the "Closet scene". In others, while he treats Claudius with distain and suspicion, he is courteous and warm to her.
In a production that I recently directed, Gertrude was a co-conspirator with Claudius in the death of Hamlet's father and deeply in love with Claudius. While she cared deeply for her son, safeguarding herself and Claudius from suspicion and retribution was her first concern. My Hamlet loved his mother (in the conventional way), idolized his father, and couldn't understand how she could possibly marry Claudius so soon after his father's death. Her behaviour confused, saddened and angered him. This set up a very different interaction between them throughout the play.
There are endless combinations of similar behaviors that create a multitude of new and interesting variations on Hamlet and Gertrude's relationship, and every production will have its own interpretation.
