This study will compare the methods of the detective work of the protagonists in Shakespeare's Hamlet Sophocles' Oedipus Rex as they seek to discover the killers of their fathers (although Oedipus does not know the murdered man was, in fact, his father). The study will focus on three points of comparison: the nature and causes of the delays in the detective work of Hamlet and Oedipus; the surreptitious and indirect nature of Hamlet's methods, compared to the public and direct approach of Oedipus; and the focus of Hamlet in the present compared to the focus of Oedipus in the past. All of these points of comparison and contrast are shaped by the fact that Hamlet is fully aware of the object of his detective work (his murderer uncle Claudius), while Oedipus does not know that the object of his search is Oedipus himself.
The detective work of both Hamlet and Oedipus is marked by their delays in pursuing either the truth, the killer, or justice. Hamlet knows almost immediately the killer of his father, and his delaying the inevitable begins at that point. The bulk of the delay in Oedipus' detective work is due to the simple fact that years pass between the time of the murder and the declaration from "the God" that the city is under a curse because of the murder of Laius. Creon reports that the God calls for vengeance to lift the curse from the city: "The God commanded clearly: let some one/ punish with force this dead man's murderers" (Sophocles 15). Immediately, Oedipus uses all his kingly power to find the killer of Laius, not knowing, at first, that the killer is himself. When Teiresias the prophet and then Creon suggest the truth, Oedipus' reacts with denial and anger against what he perceives as the prophet's incompetence and Creon's arrogance. As the truth inevitably sinks in ["Creon says that I'm the murderer of Laius" (Sophocles 41)], Oedipus certainly does not pursue the truth as ardently as he did in the beginning, but he doe...