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:
“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)
“Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise. Once and again one of those great influences which we call a Cause arises in the midst of a nation. Men of strenuous minds and high ideals come forward.... The attacks they sustain are more cruel than the collision of arms.... Friends desert and despise them.... They stand alone and oftentimes are made bitter by their isolation.... They are doing nothing less than defy public opinion, and shall they convert it by blows. Yes.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“I don’t believe in villains or heroes, only in right or wrong ways that individuals are taken, not by choice, but by necessity or by certain still uncomprehended influences in themselves, their circumstances and their antecedents.”
—Tennessee Williams (1914–1983)