Sophocles' Oedipus and Shakespeare's Hamlet

Sophocles' Oedipus and Shakespeare's Hamlet have much in common. Both plays deal with corruption in the state, incest, and the psychological torments of the two men--Oedipus and Hamlet--who must set things right. By pursuing the corruption that threatens the destruction of each of their states so relentlessly, both Oedipus and Hamlet are destroyed. And they both undergo the psychological tortures of the damned as they fulfill their destinies on the road to the truth. Neither Oedipus nor Hamlet can escape the fate that the gods have decreed for them. It is their destiny to cleanse the state at the expense of their own existence.

Before his birth, Oedipus is fated to kill his father and marry his mother. Knowing this destiny, his parents intend

to have Oedipus killed but a shepherd saves him and he goes to

live with adopted parents. Upon reaching manhood, Oedipus is

told of his destiny and in order to escape the hideous fate,

he leaves only to confront his destiny even as he tries to escape it. He kills his real father while traveling and upon reaching Thebes solves the riddle of the sphinx and in gratitude the people arrange the marriage between Oedipus and Jocasta, his mother.

As the play begins, Oedipus is told of the corruption within Thebes, the presence of which is punishing the people with death and pestilence. The message from the oracle is clear. The

pollution in Thebes must be driven out. Creon tells Oedipus the message of the oracle. "We must banish a man, o

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Oedipus & Hamlet .... New York: Bantam Books, 1969. Shakespeare, W. Hamlet. In William Shakespeare: The Complete Works. .... Sophocles. Oedipus The King. In Robert Fagles (trans.). .... (1992 8 )

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rse in the blood I shed (p. 343). Oedipus rushes to Jocasta in a "fenzy". Oedipus raves as a madman, crying for a sword to kill the "wife who is no wife" (p. 345). But the queen has hanged herself. Oedipus tears the golden brooches from her robe and drives them with all his strength into his eyes (p. 345). "With these wild wild words / He stabbed and stabbed his eye. / At every blow, the dark blood dyed his beard" (p. 346). Thus, Oedipus is destroyed because he was driven to discover the truth of his birth. An innocent victim of a callous fate, he serves as a model of psychological deterioration during the course of the play and the audience may be relieved at the play's conclusion because of the knowledge that any man might suffer the same fate as Oedipus, the victim of capricious gods. Like Oedipus, Hamlet must cleanse the state of Denmark of the corruption that lives there because his uncle has killed Hamlet's father, usurped the throne, and married Hamlet's mother in a rush to incestuous pleasures. The depth of Hamlet's disturbed psychological state is apparent as he contemplates the relief from grief that suicide would bring. O that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew, Or that

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