(note: This review ran in The TimesDaily on May 14, 2000, not the Flor-Ala)
Gertrude and Claudius, award-winning author and critic John Updike’s nineteenth novel, is a riveting prequel to William Shakespeare’s tragedy, Hamlet. Updike wisely chooses to leave the Melancholy Dane off-stage through most of his story, preferring instead to concentrate on the star-crossed love affair between Queen Gertrude and King Claudius.
Dense and pagan, the first part of Updike’s novel revels in Nordic desolation. 16 year old Gertrude’s father, King Rorik, coerces her into marriage with the celebrated warrior, Hamlet (eventually “King Hamlet”). Hamlet, while loving, is a brute who drinks himself into a deep sleep on the wedding night, leaving his new bride listless and lonely.
There is love between Hamlet and Gertrude, but little passion. Shortly after Rorik’s death and Hamlet’s assumption of the throne of Denmark, Gertrude gives birth to the couple’s only child. As Updike briefly describes Prince Hamlet’s childhood, we are given some presentiment of the Prince’s coolness toward the Queen in Shakespeare’s play: “[Hamlet] for his part found her milk sour... even as his mouth fastened onto her stinging breast he wrinkled his nose in disgust.”; “Only the disreputable, possibly demented jester, Yorik, seemed to win his approval...” Gertrude is an accessory to her husband’s monarchy and a distant nuisance to her moody young son. Denied tenderness and relevancy, Gertrude’s discontent consumes her.
And then, after years of travels, the King’s younger brother Claudius comes to Elsinore.
Part two thaws in its tone and characterization. Moving the reader closer to the events of Shakespeare’s play, Updike alters the elements of his story, changing them from the harshness of Beowulf and the Prose Edda to the warming, courtly romances of the Middle Ages. Gertrude, now in her late forties, is slowly seduced by Claudius. Their adulterous affair, fueled by love and lust, follows in the tradition of Lancelot and Guinevere. Neither Claudius nor Gertrude can resist one another, even with the possibilities of damnation by God and condemnation by the King.
With the help of the royal adviser, Polonius, the affair is kept secret for a time but whispers soon reach the King’s ear. Threats are made. Before the King can exact his revenge on the adulterous pair, he is murdered while napping in an orchard.
Updike reinvents the characters of Shakespeare’s play, adding layers of complexity to Claudius and Gertrude while emphasizing Prince Hamlet’s self-centered, malicious nature. In part three, as hints of Shakespeare begin to overwhelm Updike’s writing, we are forced to dislike the Prince. Gone for over a decade from the borders of Denmark, he reluctantly returns to Elsinore, understanding nothing and destroying all.
Updike presents a convincing case for Gertrude and Claudius, the Ethel and Julius Rosenberg of Shakespeare’s Denmark. The “murder most foul” proves to be something akin to natural, if less than kind.
The pace is fast, the narrative tight, and the characters compelling. In Gertrude and Claudius, Updike is at the top of his game.