Beginning of Essay
In The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, by William Shakespeare, women are portrayed as ineffectual and impressionable creatures dependent on men for emotional stability. The two women characters in the play, Ophelia and Gertrude, are similar in their weakness ....

Middle of Essay
.... Gertrude’s marriage to Claudius was a deplorable and sordid disappointment to Hamlet who was appalled by the speed with which his mother recovered from her widowhood. “Within a month, ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears had left the flushing in her gallèd eyes, she married. O, most wicked speed, to post with such dexterity to incestuous sheets!” (Act1.scene2.158-162). The absence of a mourning period for the Queen suggests that she needed a husband so badly that she brazenly betrayed Hamlet and her late husband, and involved herself in an immoral marriage simply for the sake of pacifying her own loneliness. Gertrude’s eagerness to re ....