Gertrude’s Elusive Libido and Shakespeare’s Unreliable Narrators

We receive very different accounts of Gertrude’s sexuality from Hamlet and the Ghost, which raises the question of the reliability of Shakespeare’s narrators. They range from completely reliable messengers to completely unreliable villains, although most of them fall between these extremes, since they are not deliberately deceptive and yet possess an interiority, including emotions and agendas, that can influence their narrations. This clearly applies to Hamlet, but we cannot tell if the Ghost is supposed to be a human being, with an internal agenda, or another kind of creature. Nor can the question be settled by Gertrude, who never testifies on her own behalf against these two hostile witnesses.