Love and sexuality in hamlet

The aim of this paper is to analyse the themes of love and sexuality in one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays, Hamlet. As a playwright, Shakespeare depicted human nature profoundly, therefore, in Hamlet we may find as many kinds of love as the number of relationships that are described and intermingled. There is romantic love, paternal and maternal love, and friendship, which is love amongpeople of the same rank, class or sex. The love present in some of these relationships is sometimes connected or overlapped with sexuality, even in cases where it is not expected to. In the following pages we will try to illustrate how two attributes which all human beings posses are shown and experienced by the characters in Hamlet.
Let us discuss first the relationship between Gertrude andClaudius, which, undoubtedly, is the one that propels the course of the play. Although revenge may seem the main theme in the play, moral behaviour also plays a very important role. Hamlet is ashamed of his mother’s hasty marriage, but this shame grows into hatred when he learns that the man his mother married is responsible for his father’s murder. As a consequence, all sorts of situations arise.
Forus readers, the queen and old Hamlet’s brother’s relationship starts with their marriage after the king’s death. But when saying:
Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,
With witchcraft of his wits, with traitorous gifts –
O wicked wit and gifts that have the power
So seduce – won to his shameful lust
The will of my most seeming virtuous queen. (I.5.42:46)
the Ghost may be giving ussome hints of a pre-existing relationship. Firstly because Old Hamlet refers to Claudius as adulterate, which denotes two persons who have sex, one of whom is married. If we consider the fact that Old Hamlet is dead, the term adulterate would not apply to Claudius, save that Shakespeare used it in a symbolical way; for example, meaning that the marriage took place too soon after the king’s death.Otherwise, we may conclude that Claudius had sexual relations with Gertrude while Old Hamlet was still alive.
Not only does the Ghost attack his brother, but he also calls his wife’s honour into question. He suggests that the queen is seemingly virtuous, which tells us that he does not even trust his wife; that there might be a possibility of an adulterate relationship with Claudius before hismurder.
There is no evidence in the play that may account for the existence of real love between Claudius and Gertrude. Claudius’s love for the queen may be genuine, but it most likely seems that he married her as a tactical move, to help him win the throne away from Hamlet after the death of the king. At the fencing match Claudius warns the queen “Gertrude, do not drink!” (V.2.268) when she is aboutto drink the poison. We may think that through this warning Claudius is showing concern for Gertrude; yet, he may also be worrying about the success of his plan to kill Hamlet.
Another instance which can account for the lack of love between Gertrude and Claudius, from Hamlet’s perception, is when he crudely tells his mother: “You cannot call it love, for at your age / The heyday in the blood istame […]” (III.4.68:69). Even though Hamlet might be saying this out of rage, he means that love and passion vanish as times goes by and his mother is not expected to feel them any more.
More than love, if there is any, what links Gertrude and Claudius is lust. Their relationship seems to be dark, lustful and even animal-like. We perceive this through Hamlet’s eyes, for instance, when heaccuses his mother of longing for Claudius “As if increase of appetite had grown / By what it fed on” (I.ii.144-45). In the chamber scene Hamlet expresses his obsession with his mother’s sexuality in a cruel way and he suggests that she should not “Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed, / Pinch wanton on your cheek, call you his mouse, / And let him for a pair of reechy kisses, / Or paddling in...