In Elizabethan England, women had no rights. Legally, they
were completely dependent om men. They had to have the protection of a father or a
brother or they would have been fair game. Gertrude may have felt that, as a Queen, she
would have been prey to any number of men who would try to usurp her authority, so she
was eager to get married again. Of course, Claudius knew this too, so he was ready to
step in and take his brother's throne and wife. He just didn't count on his nephew
figuring out his plan. She would not have been accepted without a man by her side, but,
by marrying, she gave up power for protection, though Hamlet scorned her for doing so.
He also felt that she must have known what happened to his father, but it is never
directly stated that this was the case.
Elizabeth got
around this problem by marrying herself to England. She was called the Virgin Queen, not
necessarily because she never had a relationship, but because her persona as the ruler
had to be above reproach. Plus, she knew that many men wanted to marry her simply to be
in control of the throne. She was a very smart woman and managed to break the rules
without seeming to break them. Other women did not have much of a choice, unless they
were lower class.
Shakespeare wrote across class lines; his
plays appealed to everyone from the commoner to the Queen
herself.
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