I always felt that until this moment, the Queen’s been a little skeptical about this whole madness thing. She knows her son and she knows the circumstances are crappy and she goes along with all the madness talk because it seemed relatively harmless – but here, she starts to wonder. Maybe he is crazy.
The thought of regicide being so very far outside her mind. ..this idea seems like it comes out of nowhere. What the hell is this kind talking about? As kill a king?!
Wtf?!
But I played the Queen as someone entirely ignorant Claudius’ deeds…it would all go very differently if Gertrude had a hand in the murder. We’d be dealing with a very different queen in that case.
The Hamlet Project 