How long does it take to read Gertrude and Claudius?
Gertrude and Claudius by John Updike takes about 3 hours 53 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 3 hours 53 minutes
A weekend read
First published 2000. 212 pages, about 58,300 words.
8 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 6 hours 29 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 3 hours 53 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 2 hours 26 minutes |
The page count is the median across 9 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
John Updikes's nineteenth novel tells the story of Claudius and Gertrude, King and Queen of Denmark, before the action of Shakespeare's Hamlet begins. Employing the nomenclature and certain details of the ancient Scandinavian legends that first describe the prince who feigns madness to achieve revenge upon his father's slayer, Updike brings to life Gertrude's girlhood as the daughter of King Rorik, her arranged marriage to the man who becomes King Hamlet, and her middle-aged affair with her husband's younger brother. A dark-eyed dreamer with a taste for foreign adventure, he for decades has sought to quell his love for Gertrude, and at last returns to an Elsinore whose prince is generally elsewhere. Gaps and inconsistencies within the immortal play are to an extent filled and explained in this prequel; the figure of Polonius, especially, takes on a larger significance. Beginning in the aura of pagan barbarism, and anticipating Renaissance humanism and empiricism, this modern retelling of a medieval tale presents the case for its royal couple that Shakespeare only hinted at. Gertrude and Claudius are seen afresh against a background of fond intentions and familial dysfunction, on a stage darkened by the ominous shadow of a sullen, disaffected prince.From the Hardcover edition.
Subjects: Fiction, Queens, Kings and rulers, Remarried people, History, Historical fiction
