SOURCE: “Life, Crown, and Queen: Gertrude and the Theme of Sovereignty,” in The Review of English Studies, Vol. 47, No. 186, May, 1996, pp. 163-74.
In the following essay, Aguirre examines the symbol of the cup from which Gertrude drinks in the play's final scene, and attempts to “delve further into the mythological status of Gertrude and, beyond this, to explore the role, and the fate, of myth in Hamlet.”
