Claudius' Speech

[mmazzucco9]

After reading over Claudius' speech once again I noticed a few moments in which he somewhat "twists" reality in order to support his rise to power and rid any thoughts of suspicion. One of these statements comes from the line "Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen" (Line 8, Page 21). In this statement Claudius attempts to portray the image that Gertrude has just become queen, therefore she was never queen before. By doing so he attempts to cloud the minds of the listeners in order to avoid any statements similar to Hamlet's line, "With such dexterity to incestuous sheets" (Line 162, Page 31). Claudius is implying that since Gertrude was not previously queen, known to be false, he could not have used the acquisition of power as a means to be with his sister-in-law. Therefore in Claudius' mind there should be no suspicion to the marriage.
What do you think? Has anyone found any other examples of this?

[dbrotman]

Quite the opposite... if you look in the side notes the "our" refers to himself and he was implying that she was once his sister in law and now his queen. He wants to thrown down suspicion in this speech by saying he "sadly" picked up the position, but he did it for country, he is not trying to fool anyone. Also the whole brother marrying brothers wife was a point of contention that they explained in the side notes for Hamlet's Soliloquy...it was a bit of a social commentary.