Ger´trude (2 syl.), Hamlet’s mother. On the death of her husband, who was king of Denmark, she married Claudius, the late king’s brother. Gertrude was accessory to the murder of her first husband, and Claudius was principal. Claudius prepared poisoned wine, which he intended for Hamlet; but the queen not knowing it was poisoned drank it and died; Hamlet, seeing his mother fall dead, rushed on the king and killed him.—Shakespeare, Hamlet (1596).
⁂ In the Historie of Hamblett, Gertrude is called “Geruth.”
Gertrude, daughter of Albert, patriarch of Wy´oming. One day an Indian brought to Albert a lad (nine years old) named Henry Waldegrave (2 syl.), and told the patriarch he had promised the boy’s mother, at her death, to place her son under his care. The lad remained at Wyoming for three years, and was then sent to his friends. When grown to manhood, Henry Waldegrave returned to Wyoming, and married Gertrude; but three months afterwards Brandt, at the head of a mixed army of British and Indians attacked the settlement, and both Albert and Gertrude were shot. Henry Waldegrave then joined the army of Washington, which was fighting for American independence.—Campbell, Gertrude of Wyoming (1809).
Gertrude. Brave heroine of Maria S. Cummins’s Lamplighter. She raises herself by sheer force of energy and talent from the lowly station in which she was born to a position of highest respectability and influence (1853).
Gerun´dio (Fray), i.e. Friar Gerund, the hero and title of a Spanish romance, by the Jesuit De l’Isla. It is a satire on the absurdities and bad taste of the popular preachers of the time (1758).
Ge´ryon’s Sons, the Spaniards; so called from Geryon, an ancient king of Spain, whose oxen were driven off by Her´culês. This task was one of the hero’s “twelve labors.” Milton uses the expression in Paradise Lost, xi. 410 (1665).
Geryon´eo, a human monster with three bodies. He was of the race of giants, being the son of Geryon, the tyrant who gave all strangers “as food to his kine, the fairest and the fiercest kine alive.” Geryoneo promised to take the young widow Belgê (2 syl.) under his protection; but it was like the wolf protecting the lamb, for “he gave her children to a dreadful monster to devour.” In her despair she applied to King Arthur for help, and the British king, espousing her cause, soon sent Geryoneo “down to the house of dole.”—Spenser, Faëry Queen, v. 10, 11 (1596).
⁂ “Geryoneo” is the house of Austria, and Philip of Spain in particular. “King Arthur” is England, and the earl of Leicester in particular. The “Widow Belgê” is the Netherlands; and the monster that devoured her children the inquisition, introduced by the duke of Alva. “Geryoneo” had three bodies, for Philip ruled over three kingdoms—Spain, Germany and the Netherlands. The earl of Leicester, sent in 1585 to the aid of the Netherlands, broke off the yoke of Philip.
Ges´mas, the impenitent thief crucified with our Lord. In the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, he is called Gestas. The penitent thief was Dismas, Dysmas, Demas, or Dumacus.
Three bodies on three crosses hang supine;