Hamlet and the Character of GertrudeShakespeare's sinful wife in the tragedy Hamlet is named Gertrude. Wife of Claude and mother of the prince, she is not chosen by the ghost to take revenge on the protagonist. Let us consider its history in this essay. There is no doubt that Gertrude is a sinner in this play. In her book Shakespeare's Tragic Heroes, Lily B. Campbell describes the extent of Gertrude's sin and her punishment: "And as for the queen's punishment which continues throughout the play, there is no doubt either. His love for Hamlet, his sorrow, the misfortunes which arrive so quickly that one follows on the other's heels, his consciousness of having done wrong, his final dismay are also those of someone whose soul is estranged from God because of sin.(146)Courtney Lehmann and Lisa S. Starks in "Making Mother Matter: Repression, Revision, and the Stakes of 'Reading Psychoanalysis Into' Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet," comment on the Queen's contamination in Shakespeare's Hamlet: Hamlet, a play centered on the crisis of the masculine subject and his "radical confrontation with the sexualized maternal body" foregrounds male anxiety regarding mothers, female sexuality and, consequently , of sexuality itself. Obsessed with the corruption of the flesh, Hamlet is pathologically obsessed with questions of his own origin and destination – questions that are activated by his irrepressible attraction to and disgust for his mother's "contaminated" body. (1) At the beginning of the drama, Hamlet's mother is apparently disturbed by the appearance of her son in solemn black at the court meeting, and she asks him: Good Hamlet, throw away your night color, and leave this ... ... middle of paper ......htmCampbell, The Tragic Heroes of Lily B. Shakespeare. New York: Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1970. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Lectures and notes on Shakspere and other English poets. London: George Bell and Sons, 1904. p. 342-368. http://ds.dial.pipex.com/thomas_larque/ham1-col.htmJorgensen, Paul A. “Hamlet.” William Shakespeare: The Tragedies. Boston: Twayne Publ., 1985. N. pag. http://www.freehomepages.com/hamlet/other/jorg-hamlet.htmlLehmann, Courtney and Lisa S. Starks. “Making the mother matter: repression, revision and the challenges of” reading psychoanalysis in Kenneth Branagh’s “Hamlet.” Early Modern Literary Studies 6.1 (May 2000): 2.1-24. Shakespeare, William. The tragedy of Hamlet, prince of Denmark. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 1995. http://www.chemicool.com/Shakespeare/hamlet/full.html No line number.