(2) On the other hand, she was not privy to the murder of her husband, either before the deed or after it.  There is no sign of her being so, and there are clear signs that she was not.  The representation of the murder in the play-scene does not move her; and when her husband starts from his throne, she innocently asks him, ‘How fares my lord?’ In the interview with Hamlet, when her son says of his slaughter of Polonius,

     ‘A bloody deed!’ Almost as bad, good mother,
     As kill a king and marry with his brother,

the astonishment of her repetition ‘As kill a king!’ is evidently genuine; and, if it had not been so, she would never have had the hardihood to exclaim: 

     What have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongue
     In noise so rude against me?

Further, it is most significant that when she and the King speak together alone, nothing that is said by her or to her implies her knowledge of the secret.

The Queen was not a bad-hearted woman, not at all the woman to think little of murder.  But she had a soft animal nature, and was very dull and very shallow.  She loved to be happy, like a sheep in the sun; and, to do her justice, it pleased her to see others happy, like more sheep in the sun.  She never saw that drunkenness is disgusting till Hamlet told her so; and, though she knew that he considered her marriage ‘o’er-hasty’ (II. ii. 57), she was untroubled by any shame at the feelings which had led to it.  It was pleasant to sit upon her throne and see smiling faces round her, and foolish and unkind in Hamlet to persist in grieving for his father instead of marrying Ophelia and making everything comfortable.  She was fond of Ophelia and genuinely attached to her son (though willing to see her lover exclude him from the throne); and, no doubt, she considered equality of rank a mere trifle compared with the claims of love.  The belief at the bottom of her heart was that the world is a place constructed simply that people may be happy in it in a good-humoured sensual fashion.

Her only chance was to be made unhappy.  When affliction comes to her, the good in her nature struggles to the surface through the heavy mass of sloth.  Like other faulty characters in Shakespeare’s tragedies, she dies a better woman than she had lived.  When Hamlet shows her what she has done she feels genuine remorse.  It is true, Hamlet fears it will not last, and so at the end of the interview (III. iv. 180 ff.) he adds a warning that, if she betrays him, she will ruin herself as well.[80] It is true too that there is no sign of her obeying Hamlet in breaking off her most intimate connection with the King.  Still she does feel remorse; and she loves her son, and does not betray him.  She gives her husband a false account of Polonius’s death, and is silent about the appearance of the Ghost.  She becomes miserable;

     To her sick soul, as sin’s true nature is,
     Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss.