Marriage, sex, and love shape Hamlet by defining relationships among the characters while causing major problems throughout the plot of the play. Gertrude's marriage to Claudius is the initial shaper of the actions of this play as well as what afflicts Hamlet and sends him into madness.
Not only does Gertrude marry her husband's brother, she marries him right after the funeral. Love is not what compels Gertrude to do this, it is the power she retains as Queen that causes her to make such incestuous decisions. This marriage essentially breaks Hamlet's heart because the love he had for his father and the betrayal he sees within his mother. .
"Such an act/ That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,/Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose/ From the fair forehead of an innocent love,/ And sets a blister there, makes marriage vows/ As false as dicers" oaths. O, such a deed/ As from the body of contraction plucks/ The very soul, and sweet religion makes/ A rhapsody of words! Heaven's face does glow,/ O"er this solidity and compound mass./ With heated visage, as against the doom,/ Is thought-sick at the act."(III.iv.41-51). .
This act that Gertrude has committed has shamed love is Hamlet's eyes. This passage comes from one of Shakespeare's greatest confrontation and heart-pouring scenes in all of his writing. Both the Branagh and Zeffirelli movies illustrate this scene very well. You really see how hurt Hamlet is by his mother's actions as well as the possibility of an incestuous mother- son relationship. Is Hamlet an upset son or is he an envious lover? The Zeffirelli version really leads me to believe that Gertrude and Hamlet do in fact have an incestuous relationship. .
Love comes into play in another realm of the play which concerns Ophelia and her love for Hamlet. Because of the changes Hamlet is going through, Laertes warns his sister to not get involved with him. .
"Perhaps he loves you now,/ And now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch/ The virtue of his will, but you must fear,/ His greatness weighed, his will is not his own.
