Influences
Gertrude and Claudius, a John Updike novel, serves as a prequel to the events of the play. It follows Gertrude from her wedding to King Hamlet, through an affair with Claudius, and its murderous results, until the very beginning of the play. Gertrude also appears as a character in Howard Barker's Gertrude—The Cry, which uses some of the characters from Hamlet.
Hamlet has played "a relatively small role" in the appropriation of Shakespeare's plays by women writers. Margaret Atwood's "Gertrude Talks Back", in her 1994 collection of short stories Good Bones and Simple Murders, sees the title character setting her son straight about Old Hamlet's murder: "It wasn't Claudius, darling, it was me!"
The character of Gemma Teller Morrow on the FX show Sons of Anarchy which incorporates plot elements from Hamlet, is influenced by and shares many traits with Queen Gertrude.
Read more about this topic: Gertrude (Hamlet)
Famous quotes containing the word influences:
“Without looking, then, to those extraordinary social influences which are now acting in precisely this direction, but only at what is inevitably doing around us, I think we must regard the land as a commanding and increasing power on the citizen, the sanative and Americanizing influence, which promises to disclose new virtues for ages to come.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I am fooling only myself when I say my mother exists now only in the photograph on my bulletin board or in the outline of my hand or in the armful of memories I still hold tight. She lives on in everything I do. Her presence influenced who I was, and her absence influences who I am. Our lives are shaped as much by those who leave us as they are by those who stay. Loss is our legacy. Insight is our gift. Memory is our guide.”
—Hope Edelman (20th century)
“Do not seek anxiously to be developed, to subject yourself to many influences to be played on; it is all dissipation.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)