Customer Reviews

Gertrude and Claudius

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Each of the three parts that make up "Gertrude and Claudius" begins: "The King was irate." In the first part, the statement refers to Gertrude's father Rorik; in the second, to Gertrude's husband Horvendile; in the last, to Gertrude's second husband Claudius. Gertrude is surrounded by kings.

In this manner Updike structures his story of Hamlet's mother's marriage, affair, and second marriage. It's a parents' view of the Hamlet problem. Comparisons will be made to "Brazil" and "The Coup," his other flights of imagination. "Gertrude and Claudius" reads better and faster, perhaps because it's a concise prequel to the Shakespeare play; from the first to the last page, we know what's coming.

I read it as a prose poem in which Updike's luminous sentences serve a legend instead of the familiar contemporary situations of his best novels. "Gertrude and Claudius" allows author and reader to enter a distant enticing word-world. I had to look up garderobe, houppelande, hesychast, cloisonne, and bliaut, just to name a few. We are treated to a ten-page treatise on falconry, the objective correlative to Gertrude's plight as a woman caged in cold dark paternal Denmark.

The plot is secondary to precision of language and depth of insight regarding romance, marriage, and children. Updike disdains all the cheap tricks and twists of novel writing, happy instead to apply his verbal wizardry to a ready-made narrative.

The language veers from verbatim and paraphrased Shakespeare to familiar Updikean metaphors, to colloquialisms like, "He had gotten away with it." The characters speak in Elizabethan English, in what I take to be translated elevated medieval or Renaissance Danish, and at other times like present-day guilty self-analyzing New England adulterers. Claudius even quotes Provencal poetry to woo his beloved.

Sometimes "Gertrude and Claudius" reminded me of the unconvincing parallel universe sections of Updike's previous (and otherwise excellent) novel, "Toward the End of Time." In that novel, the narrator forces himself to read a few pages of a difficult history book before bedtime.

I would recommend "Gertrude and Claudius" to all Updike fans. Let's face it, we're loyal freaks, even when it comes to his lesser works, which nevertheless surpass most hyped novels being published these days. If you are new to Updike, "Gertrude and Claudius" may not be the best book to start with, unless you like Shakespeare and want additional background on "Hamlet." Go with the Rabbit books or, if you like books about writers, the Bech books, or the short stories, which contain some of his best work. Still, you can't go wrong with any Updike copyrighted in this or the previous century.

The idea of a prequel to Hamlet, rooted in the same source material that Shakespeare used when writing his play, is a clever one. But this book is no Hamlet. This is a light and quick read, a stray speculation revolving around Gertrude and her affair with her husband's brother that precedes the action in Hamlet and culminates with Claudius's telling of the play's early scenes. It is fun because it illustrates just how fully do Shakespeare's moral perspectives on Claudius's treachery, Gertrude's perfidy, and Hamlet's callow innocence color our interpretation of the events in Elsinore. Updike shows us that there is another way to accept the characters. "Putting aside the murder being covered up, Claudius seems a capable king, Gertrude a noble queen, Ophelia a treasure of sweetness, Polonius a tedious but not evil counsellor, Laertes a generic young man. Hamlet pulls them all into death".

Of course, the murder and its cover-up are precisely what Shakespeare refuses to "put aside", and resorts to the stratagem of the talking ghost to reveal the otherwise perfect crime. Shakespeare's story of unnatural deceit and its cleansing through the shedding of the blood of both guilty and innocent is thrilling and profound precisely because of the weight of its moral judgements and the depth of its characters. Updike gives us the latter without the former. He deftly and patiently draws the characters of Hamlet senior, Claudius, Polonius, and Gertrude so we can plainly see their motivations and, by default, we may accept their choices as natural, if not honorable, ones. It's a not terribly seductive game, to excuse fratricide because the victim is a bore whose wife deserves better. In the end, Shakespeare got the moral compass about right. Updike's Claudius and Gertrude are pathetic, but hardly sympathetic. The book is a fun read, because it turns Hamlet's characters on their heads and lets us examine them from a new angle, but I'll reread Hamlet before I reread Updike.

Skillful writing will out. Updike's premise of merging the ancient legends of the Danish court into an intimate insight of Gerutha/Geruthe/Gertrude and the men in her royal existence is fascinating. His storyteller's finesse respects the historical reality of necessary royal matchmaking with Gerutha as the center of the story.

Taking the point of view of the mother of Hamlet, that mad Danish prince, Updike reveals Gertrude as a woman with the same passions of women of today. Updike's characterization of her as fearing her only child and sensing his ability to bring about doom makes her a uniquely sympathetic woman. Gertrude's world is at the mercy of her men: first her father and his Lord Chamberlain, then her husbands, and then her son. However, her attempt at experiencing life within those confines makes for a timeless story.

Getting to know Gerutha more intimately means getting to know all of her men more intimately. Rorik, Horwendil, Coriambus, Amleth and Feng become very real people as they develop in their relation to the queen and emerge in the familiar names of Hamlet, Polonius, and Claudius.

This little tome is an easy read, one that begs the reader to keep going. The use of three parts to show the progress of the tale from the Latin record into the German and finally the English adds to the story's richness as it continues over the centuries into the time when it becomes the Shakespearian tragedy known as Hamlet. Updike obviously loves the English language and his love affair as a mighty wordsmith stands him in high regard. I highly recommend any Shakespearian fan to try this prequel on for size. For anyone who has studied the play, read the Stoppard version, seen the Olivier, Gibson, and Branagh film versions, this book just adds more gravy to the tradition. Bravo!

On the face it, this would seem to be the perfect Updike project: as a prequel to Hamlet, it tells the story of Gertrude's marriage to King Hamlet and subsequent affair with her brother-in-law Claudius (and after that Claudius' murder of King Hamlet and marriage to Gertrude - the immediate premise of Shakespeare's play). One would have thought that the essential story - an adulterous affair - this time with self-conscious literary pretensions would be an easy challenge for Updike's exceptional gifts. And in the main Updike acquits himself very well indeed. Most importantly, he furnishes us with extremely imaginative and credible versions of Hamlet's mother and step-father, who emerge from this novel more detailed and sympathetic than they ever do from productions of the play. But that was always going to be the easy part. Harder for the novelist is the recreation of medieval Scandinavia - which Updike attempts valiantly and achieves impressively - and the formulation of a convincing way of speaking for the characters. This last I would judge to be the major flaw in the novel. Updike opts for a pseudo-aristocratic idiom that seems more timeless than, say, the American vernacular of his other novels, but into it leak traces of other modes: we have Shakespearean words ('porpentine') rubbing shoulders with American words ('fall' instead of 'autumn') and archaic phrases ('so strait a gate') mixing with modernisms ('as a starter': these last in consecutive sentences), all in a syntax that is one moment reassuringly supple, the next alienatingly stiff. Updike presumably hoped for a successful fusion of ancient and modern in his casting of such a language, but the fact remains that I at least found myself having to be generous-minded to an extent unusual with this writer.

Inevitably, perhaps, the story is always keeping one eye on Shakespeare's play: there are constant forward references to it in details of its language and in its (otherwise unaccountable) allusions to the activities of the young prince. Naturally, then, one gets the sense that in this novel Updike has set himself the ultimate challenge: to produce a work that sets out conspicuously to rival not only Shakespeare but Shakespeare at his most towering. And there is some sense of challenge here: in particular, Gertrude's fusion of benign emotionalism and practical common-sense begins to function as an implicit way of contextualising and therefore reprimanding the hysterical intellectualism and egocentricity of Shakespeare's Hamlet. But the challenge remains implicit and - because confined to prequel form - separated off from Hamlet's protagonism. And so the novel remains, for Updike at least, an usually subtle and perhaps undeveloped project. One cannot help missing the sense - abundantly available in most of his earlier work - of Updike in assured mastery of his own territory.

This is one of those books which I never wanted to end. I"d ration my reading to delay the inevitable. Updike has taken a tale we all know so well - Hamlet, Ophelia, Polonius have always seemed more historical than literary - and made us believe that this time the tragedy would be prevented. While of course we know that nothing will change, that Shakespeare arrives after the last page to bring this tale into history. Meeting the Danish Princess Gerutha in the ancient Danish court, we are struck with her intelligence and her strength. We wish her well. Her stolid husband, priggish son, exotic brother-in-law, and sycophantic advisor are the embryonic Shakespearians. We read with fascination as they develop into their fated roles. Neither Amleth, Hamblett, or Hamlet is a sympathetic character. For a while, Claudius (nee Feng in part one)is not a villain, merely an adventurer playing at seduction. This reader even felt, for a time, an Arthurian tragedy unfolding, rather than the familiar Shakespearean one. But"history" cannot be rewritten. Updike gives us an excellent feel for the politics of Scandinavia at the time, the chill Danish landscape, and for the court at Elsinore. And through Feng's voice we learn of the courts in Spain, in Italy, in Constantinople. A warmer world is brought alive through Feng and in part it is the lure of this world that helps seduce Gerutha. This is a small and reward-ing masterpiece.

Gertrude and Claudius is focused on a necessarily small market niche: anyone who has not read and loved Hamlet will not see the need for this story, which is a prequel in three acts to what might be Shakespeare's greatest tragedy. And that's a shame.

This is a wonderfully written story that convincingly challenges the traditional sympathies we all developed in reading Hamlet, especially regarding Hamlet's cold and calculating mother. Mr. Updike forcefully and dramatically paints a picture of Gertrude as a sweet and decent woman fatally flawed by her attraction to Claudius, her husband's brother. And Claudius plays more than a supporting role here, giving more insight into Hamlet, who at once seems more confused and easier to understand. It all works because of Mr. Updike's wit, insight, and often perfect timing.

Gertrude and Claudius is also a scholarly study, based on the same source materials Shakespeare used. In fact, as the plot draws closer to Hamlet's 30th birthday and the start of the play that carries his name, Mr. Updike changes to progressively newer sources. That creates a story is "historically" accurate (well, as much as a story based on ancient legends can be). Incidentally, there is an interesting and slightly confusing aspect to that as well: Claudius starts out as Feng, and then becomes Fengon before finally being called Claudius; for his part, Hamlet starts out as Amleth. Each section starts with the words "The king was irate," but in each case there is a different king -- Horwendil (Amleth's father), then Fengon, then Hamlet.

But one of the most compelling aspects to the story is the fact that it was written at all. Mr. Updike is a writer near the end of his career and with nothing left to prove. He has excelled writing several genres of fiction, criticism, poetry, and commentary. And yet this story shows that he is still experimenting, still challenging his abilities.

An amusing if uneven and occasionally precious read. Updike uses broad themes and small hints in Shakespeare's text, along with his own well-advertised vision of the world and of male/female couplings, to imagine the prequel to Hamlet. There is much to savor: tidbits of Danish lore and custom (he clearly spent hours in the Scandinavia aisle at the library), and well-conceived characters, especially the lusty, unfulfilled, self-contradictory, often self-deluding Gertrude. The most fun comes from his little slips of foreshadowing of famous scenes and lines from the play (e.g. Gertrude's casual observation of the young Hamlet's fondness for Yorick and love of things theatrical, Claudius' fascination with the political machinations and murders among the Byzantines, observed during his many trips abroad while his brother ruled Denmark). But the cleverness often congeals into preciousness, bordering on slapstick (e.g., Polonius's habit of hiding behind partitions; commentary on avoiding lending and borrowing in life). And the language can turn from lustrous to laughably wooden without warning. Updike finds himself limited in his search for an ancient Danish style to phrases that get repeated until they rot: I will never read the word "concupiscence" again without thinking of this book. All in all, the insights into Hamlet's characters and into the sharply defined boundaries of Updike's imagination outweigh the flatness of the inside literary jokes. And Updike finally reveals for highschool readers everywhere why the word "nunnery" in Hamlet's nasty invitation to Ophelia actually means "brothel" -- just like the Cliff Notes said it did.

This story is a treat from the first page to the last: Updike's Getrude is believable: she's beautiful (Updike has a definite gift for describing feminine beauty in his prose, and he uses it here with his descriptions of Gertrude and Ophelia), spoiled, and bereft of useful life skills (as a princess would be).

The way the story unfolds is deliciously subtle. For instance, I began to nervous that every time Feng/Claudius always mentioned his love for the queen in the same breath as he remarked on his brother's unworthiness for the throne. It seemed Gertrude was inexorably tied to the throne for the ambitious Claudius; and Updike leaves us questioning which Claudius loved more--the Queen or the throne? And when Claudius does finally attain both the Queen and the throne, the changes in his behavior name his choice. Another master stroke: we never really do figure out just why the Queen can't give herself wholly to Horwendil until he shows himself to be a small, vindictive cuckold and we get the full story of his treatment of Sela. The Queen herself reacts to Howendil on pure intuition; she is seldom privy to the words and deeds that so distinguished Horwendil as a royal ..... Such subtlety makes darned good storytelling, especially when combined with Updike's usual, graceful prose.

I rather wondered--and still do--what the point was in using three sets of historic names for the main characters in the book. On one hand, I rather liked the reminder of the ancient origins of the story; on the other, I found having to figure out who's who in each part slightly (just a bit, not much) distracting. It isn't difficult, and yet I'm left wondering whether the artistic device--whatever it was--was worth the distraction. But this is quibbling; I suppose I should be grateful Updike has such faith in his readers' intellects. :-)

Finally, the length of the book makes it just about perfect for summer travel reading. You'll never get through Rabbit, Run on your trip; but Gertrude and Claudius is a manageable read to go with your airport coffee and cinnabun!

Gertrude and Claudius as a novel is sheer entertainment. Given that everyone knows the Shakespeare Hamlet, with so many movie versions cropping up yearly, it is a pleasure to see a contemporary writer of the stature of Updike apply the bard's techniques of story telling to introduce the dysfunctional family Hamlet ultimately destroys. If Updike is tedious at the outset of this novel - who in their sane mind wants to wade through the mire of Danish myth/history replete with irritating name changes, period language, etc - once his tenor is set he takes us on a rather winsome journey of royalty, class, passion, adultery, murder and courtplotting that makes for a page-turner of a novel.

In the end, I think Updike's novel, for all its meanderings, gives us a broader vista of why Hamlet is so troubled when the curtain opens on Shakespeare's play. There are insights here worth pondering. This is a great little book for an evening's diversion.

Poor Claudius! He has been getting the worst of bad raps from young Hamlet for 400 years. And Gertrude doesn't come off much better. John Updike has decided to stand up for the defence. In "Hamlet" the prince and some pompous ghost get to wax indignant because a middle-aged couple doesn't act their staid age, but seem actually to love one another physically. Working from the old stories that lie behind Shakespeare's, he turns suburban Elsinore into a trysting place for the Queen and her husband's far more attentive and humane brother. Updike is in familiar territory here, reveling in the physical details of sexual love, illicit and married.

Evident, too, is his familiar quiet mastery of the background facts, both of the play and the wider Renaissance life he pulls in to tell the story of this much-maligned couple. But do see "Hamlet" before you read this book, rather than after. Otherwise, your sympathy for that self-righteous prig of a prince might not survive.