altered view of love has also undoubtedly changed Hamlet’s relationship with the women he loves and who claims to love him, Ophelia. He comments on the love of a woman in general when he is seated beside Ophelia, watching the play and he asks her about the prologue. She responds “’Tis brief, my lord” for which Hamlet answers “As woman’s love” (III.ii. 137-138). Hamlet distances himself from Ophelia and tells her that he had never loved her (III.i. 119-120). This is evidently not true when, after she dies, Hamlet declares to Laertes “I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers/Could not, with all their quantity of love,/Make up my sum” (V.i. 254-256). Although, Hamlet does not really believe that Ophelia’s love for him was untrue, he does believe that her love could be as fickle as his mother’s in the future.Hamlet believes, at times, that his mother helped his uncle Claudius in killing his father. This enrages Hamlet as this is not only treason, but the greatest offence his mother could have committed. After he kills Polonius in his mother’s bedroom, mistaking him for Claudius, Gertrude comments on Hamlet’s actions saying “O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!” (III. iv. 26). Hamlet then accuses Gertrude of conspiring to kill his father and says “A bloody deed—almost as bad, good-mother,/As kill a king and marry with his brother” (III. iv. 27-28). But Gertrude’s bewilderment in her response “As Kill a king?” (III.iv. 28) leaves Hamlet to assume that she did not kill his father and this is when he shifts from accusing his mother to warning her of her incestuous actions. He still believes that Gertrude has betrayed his father, but now he does not believe that she murdered him. This incestuous nature of Gertrude’s new marriage to her dead husband’s brother is another factor that antagonizes H...
