Who Is To Blame In Gertrude's Suicide?

Gertrude’s Suicide? In the Shakespearean tragedy "Hamlet," Prince Hamlet’s mother Gertrude encounters many misfortunes, which she feels that she is to blame for. Gertrude was brought into the middle of everybody’s dilemmas and thus felt responsible for the occurrences that happened to all of the significant characters throughout the play. She allows her emotions to build up in an unhealthy manner and this leads to her eventual death. The question that surrounds her death is whether she committed suicide or led a natural demise? This is an unknown fact because on the night of her death she drank a poisoned cup of wine which was meant for Hamlet. However there was a possibility that Gertrude knew that the wine had deadly toxins in it. Although there is no definite guarantee that she committed suicide, the evidence is overwhelming that she knew that the wine was tainted. Prior to the opening of the drama, Gertrude was having an incestuous affair with her husbands brother, Claudius. Claudius then killed his brother (King Hamlet), and shortly after married Gertrude. Prince Hamlet could not handle this and was disgusted by the entire situation. He then decided to put on an "Antic Disposition," meaning that he will pretend to be crazy in order to
However, as Gertrude may have heard, Laertes sword was to be poison tipped and would kill Hamlet if it touched him. In case that plan didn’t work, Hamlet would be given a poisoned glass of wine. After the first round of the sword fight, Gertrude picked up the poisoned glass of wine and proposed a toast to the fight. Claudius told her not to drink it, but she replied "I will, my lord; I pray you pardon me." This was the first time that Gertrude didn’t obey Claudius’ orders. The only logical explanation for this is that she didn’t want to observe the death of her