Gertrude as the trophy wife -- husband, immaterial. She's a beautiful, complacent woman who is perfectly happy to indulge herself and to navigate from husband to husband, provided her own station and comfort are assured.
I think that is unfair to Gertrude. She's not complacent, and she'[s fairly smart, although she doesn't underestand her son, the genius--the only character who comes close to understanding him is Claudius, who is about half as smart as Hamlet and not half as good an actor. She's also not terribly happy. She has a strong sensual element, and she is, like most upper class public women in those days, trapped, so it is unfair to suggest taht she had good alternatives to marrying Claudius. Getting to a nunnery is a high demand to expect of anyone who hasn't a strong religious calling, and nothing in the ploay suggests that anyone in it does expect (perhaps, if one can take him at his word) Hamlet himself. So I think better of Gertrude than Joanna does.
Years ago, when I read this sort of thing, I read an essay defending Gertrude by a Shakespeare scholar, and it rang true to me. Of course I don't understand the play the way most people do. I never thought that Hamlet delayed or temporaized either. Not that as soon as he's settled Claudius' guilt in in his own mind through the devicde of the play, he's in Gertrude's chambers, and killing Polonius, whom he takes for Claudius, then he's sent to England. Basicaally he kills Claudius as soon as he reasonably can after he's made up his mind on evidence he has, rather than that reported to him by questionable Ghosts, that Claudius is murderer.
jks
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