Hamlet and Gertrude, Love or Hate

Imagine it, while away at college you receive word that your beloved father who had seemed in good health only a short while ago has died leaving your mother and yourself. This situation would be enough to bring great depression to even the strongest of souls but for Hamlet, the fictional prince of Denmark in Shakespeare's play of the same name, this is not his imagination but cruel reality. Not only has his father passed but, as if to mock the very memory of the former king, Gertrude, Hamlet's mother and queen, has married again within two months. This shock is further compounded by the fact the her new husband is none other than her former brother-in-law, Claudius.…