Shakespeare would love it -- Gertrude and Claudius by John Updike

A literary treat not to be missed, Updike's Gertrude and Claudius begins the Hamlet story when his mother, at age 16, is forced by her father the king, to marry a neighboring noble -- a brutal, but effective warrior and leader. It's a political marriage, that makes the groom the heir apparent. She objects, but obeys -- such is her duty. He treats her roughly, but passionately; and she, despite learning to enjoy his forceful pleasure, feels less than loved by him.

The story is told in three parts, in each of which the main characters take on new names, as the political and social environment in Denmark changes, and in keeping with the layers of legend on which the Hamlet story is built. Gerutha becomes Geruthe, then Gertrude. Her father is first called Rorik, then Rodericke. Her first husband changes from Horwendil to Horwendile to Hamlet (the elder). His brother goes from Feng, to Fengon to Claudius. The son's name evolves from Amleth to Hamblet to Hamlet (the younger). Meanwhile the Lord Chamberlain shifts from Corambus to Corambis to Polonius.

Part 1 begins in the crude and bloody medieval world of Vikings. The kingdom is nominally Christian, having recently been converted by order of a recent king, as a political ploy, to ally them with the Holy Roman Empire. But old beliefs are still strong. Far away, in Mediterranean lands visited by Feng, other belief systems and modes of living prevail.

In Part 2, the realm is more civilized, with more Christian notions of the role and duties of a king as God's anointed, and with Christian conscience tempering brute passion. Notions of courtly love are powerful, but not strong enough to keep Geruthe and Fengon apart.

Part 3 feels modern, with each character psychologically unique. In the relationship of Gertrude and Claudius, passionate love, personal ambition, and feelings of obligation and guilt are intertwined in interesting ways. The two of them feel very real. Their motivations and actions seem inevitable based on their well-established personalities.

On the one hand, this is a story of post-menopausal passion which stands on its own -- the uncontrollable love of a 59 year-old man for a 47-year-old woman.

On the other hand, this is a clever commentary on the Hamlet story, providing interesting and credible new insight into the relationship of Hamlet with his mother, father, and uncle, and the cultural environment in which his story unfolds.

Both Claudius and Gertrude are portrayed as justified in their actions. Their love has grown over many years. And Claudius (without the knowledge of Gertrude) murders the old king out of self-defense -- after the king discovered their affair and was ready to take his revenge on the two of them and also on Polonius, their co-conspirator. And it is Polonius who gives Claudius the information and the key his needs to catch the king alone at this desperate moment.

Here and there, Updike scatters delightful passages that play on what we all know about Shakespeare's Hamlet. For instance (p. 34), "As the powers of language and imagination descended upon him, the boy dramatized himself, and quibbled over everything, with parent, priest, and tutor. Only the disreputable, possibly demented jester, Yorik, seemed to win his approval: young Amleth loved a joke, tot he point of finding the entire world, as it was composed within Elsinore, a joke. Joking, it seemed to his mother, formed his shield for fending off solemn duty and heartfelt intimacy." Later, King Claudius provides this analysis of Hamlet's character and its origins (p. 189), "The King was stern and commanding; he loomed to the boy like a god, in armor, on horseback. Yorick was the closest to a human father young Hamlet had, but was a drunken rascal, and could act as mentor in nothing but antics and folly." Hence, Yorick, who never appears directly, comes across as Hamlet's Falstaff; and Claudius as a sensitive, understanding and even a loving step-father.

Meanwhile, Gertrude, too, seems to understand Hamlet, though her perspective is quite different from that of Claudius or of Polonius, who wants to force Hamlet and Ophelia apart in order to trick him into taking her more seriously, indirectly, deviously moving him in the direction of marriage. (pp. 188-189) "Gertrude impatiently heard in all this the doddering Lord Chamberlain's faith that human affairs could all be managed, manipulated with cogs and ratchets like millwheels and clocks, by a clever enough puppeteer. Her own sense was of tides, natural and supernatural, to which wisdom submits, seeking victory in surrender. The young lovers should be, she felt, left alone in desire's grip, to be lifted by it above the maze constructed by their elders. But in these opinions she knew Polonius and Claudius both would call her sentimental and irrational, yielding up all initiative to God, like a benighted peasant woman or infidel Muhammedan."

The book ends ironically at the point in the story where the play begins. "The era of Claudius had dawned; it was shine in Denmark's annals. He might, with moderation of his carousals, last another decade on the throne. Hamlet would be the perfect age of forty when the crown descended. He and Ophelia would have the royal heirs lined up like ducklings. Gertrude would gently fade, his saintly gray widow, into the people's remembrance... He had gotten away with it. All would be well."

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