Appearance vs. Reality in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex” Essay

Appearances very rarely offer an understanding of truth. This is particularly true in dealing with some of the great tragedies of literature. William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, for instance, discovers the many ways in which appearance can be used to both mask and unmask the truth while Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex illustrates how appearances may sometimes be preferable to the truth. Because the truth is considered the highest ideal, though, it cannot be denied in either play and eventually brings about the ruin of those who had elected to avoid the truth in earlier times. The difference between truth and appearance is evident throughout Shakespeare’s play but is perhaps best recognized in the play within the play while the difference between truth and appearance in Sophocles’ play reaches even deeper into the psyche of the characters.

In Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, Bernardo starts off the action by demanding to know “Who’s there?” (I, i, 1). As the action unfolds, Shakespeare tells the story of the young prince of Denmark who is informed by the ghost of his father that his Uncle Claudius, now married to Hamlet’s mother, murdered his father with poison. As the ghost demands vengeance, Hamlet seeks a way to both prove what the ghost has said and bring about the revenge that is demanded if the ghost is correct. Hamlet feigns insanity to discover the truth, but he quickly discovers that he is not the only one who merely seems to be something they are not. Claudius pretends to be a righteous king but is, in actuality, little more than a base murderer. Gertrude seems to be a gracious queen, deferring to her duty as leader of a country, but is actually little more than a plaything if seen as innocent and at least as debased as Claudius if seen as guilty. Polonius seems to be a servile counselor to his lord but is a scheming profiteer and Hamlet’s friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, are actually his would-be murderers. Shakespeare brings attention to this concept explicitly through his presentation of a play within the play.

In trying to prove that his uncle is guilty, Hamlet decides to use a troupe of players that have come to the castle, making the Mousetrap play equally play double duty as has most of the characters. He first directs the players to perform a specific play that comes close to mimicking what he believes must have happened between his father and his uncle in Act 2, scene 2. He reveals his purpose for doing this in a soliloquy that closes the Act: “I have heard that guilty creatures sitting at a play / Have by the very cunning of the scene / Been struck so to the soul that presently / They have proclaimed their malefactions / … / I’ll observe his looks. / I’ll tent him to the quick. If ‘a does blench, / I know my course / … / The play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king” (II, ii, 575-578, 582-584, 590-591). Within this speech, Hamlet demonstrates his understanding that fiction often reflects reality sufficiently enough to cause a guilty conscience discomfort when confronted with similar circumstances (Westlund, 1978).

In preparing for the performance, Hamlet provides the players with specific lines and actions to include within the overall play they are about to perform and gives them lengthy instructions as to the acting of it so as to make it seem as real as possible. “Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you overstep not the modesty of nature. For anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure” (III, ii, 16-23). In these care instructions to the players, it can be seen that Hamlet does not want them to perform a simple play, but instead wants it to be as realistic as possible. “He places an inordinate importance on doing and knowing perfectly; throughout most of his experience, he also places the responsibility for that knowledge and that doing solely on himself” (Hassel, 1994: 610), explaining both his inordinate attention to detail and the importance he places on the outcome of the play. Since it has already been revealed that his purpose is to ‘catch the conscience of the king,’ he wants the play to seem like a retelling, in front of the guilty man’s eyes, of the actual events that took place rather than a lighthearted evening of fun and the play proves effective in bringing about the results Hamlet was seeking.

The play within a play found in Hamlet serves both as a turning point in the story that is justified in many ways as well as helps to illustrate the concept that most of the characters in the play are actually playing double roles. Within the storyline of the play within the play, Hamlet is given the proof he needs that the ghost was in earnest in accusing King Claudius of killing the older king in order to gain riches, power, and queen. However, this proof provided to Hamlet also serves to let the king know of Hamlet’s correct suspicions and therefore allows Shakespeare to increase the action of the play, adding a greater element of suspense and tension as the audience is left to wonder who will kill whom first. In addition, throughout the play, Hamlet and the other characters, such as the queen reveal a great depth of duplicity in their actions. In carrying these things out, all of the other characters’ duplicity is mostly hidden, such as that of the queen, yet become exposed in the end. Throughout the play, appearances are deliberately used as a disguise to the reality of the situation and the characters involved.

In Oedipus the King, the action opens as Oedipus is approached by plague-stricken masses asking for help from him as king. When he sees his people gathered around him as if he were a god, his response to them is “What means this reek of incense everywhere, / From others, and am hither come me, / I Oedipus, your world-renowned king” (4-8). His lordly manner is revealed in his further patronizing suggestion that he has come before them as a benevolent father might appear before his humbled children, gracing them with his personal attention in the matter brought forward. In promising to find the murderer who has caused the plague, Oedipus seems to be so all-powerful in his domain that a mere announcement should be all it takes to bring the long-hidden murderer to justice: “Well, I will start afresh and once again / Make dark things clear” (139-140). When the blind prophet Teresias, a highly respected counselor, is finally driven to indicate that Oedipus was the murderer of King Laius at the continued abuse of Oedipus himself and against Teresias’ better judgment, Oedipus is not able to accept the reality of these words as he remains steeped in the appearance of his own greatness.

While the audience begins to realize the truth of the situation long before Oedipus, eventually, the main character must also realize the folly of his ways. This eventual clarity of perception is what is referred to in Greek tragedy as anagnorisis. In Aristotelian terms, this word translates to mean recognition (“Aristotle”, 1998). For the audience, this is represented by the usually sudden realization on the part of the protagonist that he is the primary cause of the suffering or detrimental situation in which he finds himself. This epiphany can reveal not only the true role of the protagonist in the wrongs occurring but also the true nature of the characters around them. This is foreshadowed by Creon just before Jocasta and Oedipus finally discuss the various events of her former husband’s death and Oedipus’ experiences prior to his arrival in Thebes, the discussion that finally reveals the connections. Creon tells Oedipus, “You are obstinate— / obviously unhappy to concede, / and when you lose your temper, you go too far. / But men like that find it most difficult / to tolerate themselves” (814-819). In this one short statement, he sums up the entire tragedy. He illustrates Oedipus’ stubbornness and pride in being unwilling to concede his own complicity in events he has not yet heard the details of. Finally, as Creon indicates, once the truth is known by Oedipus himself, it doesn’t matter what Jocasta might do to try to hide the facts from the world, that it is known by them is already more than can be born. As the truth becomes more and more difficult to avoid, Oedipus only pursues it with greater urgency, even as Jocasta begs him to stop and allow the case to fall unsolved. The tragedy comes about as the truth finally wins its way free of the appearances that had been cast to cover it and one after another of the once happy family is destroyed.

Through his portrayal of puffed-up appearances and hidden truths, it cannot be missed that Sophocles was trying to illustrate to his audience the dangers of an absence of humility and common sense. This is, in some sense, what Aristotle was trying to communicate regarding the purpose of tragedy, which he describes as “an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play … through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions” (Aristotle cited in Friedlander, 2005). By illustrating the various things that can go wrong when one believes, through their own puffed-up sense of themselves, that they are capable of anything, Sophocles hoped to cause some of his more illustrious audience members to remain more humbly in touch with the truth as a means of avoiding Oedipus’ fate.

In both Hamlet and Oedipus Rex, the main characters prove unable to deal directly with reality in one form or another. While Hamlet spends his time attempting to prove reality by hiding under strange appearances and performances, Oedipus’ entire life is revealed to have been a fraud. Hamlet remains hidden behind the appearances of a mad man until he uses the appearance of a play to unmask the man he is hunting, revealing his own true intentions at the same time. Oedipus remains hidden behind an appearance of greatness so large it fools him, to the point where neither he nor his wife ever discusses what happened to her former husband and king, which would have revealed the truth much earlier. In exposing the truth of Denmark, Hamlet achieves his goal but dies as a result of his efforts. In exposing the truth of Thebes, Oedipus destroys himself.

Works Cited

“Aristotle.” Critica Links. (1998). The University of Hawaii. 2008. Web.

Friedlander, Eric. “Enjoying Oedipus the King by Sophocles.” The Pathguy. (2005). Web.

Hassel, R. Chris Jr. “Hamlet’s ‘Too, Too Solid Flesh.’” Sixteenth Century Journal. Vol. 25, N. 3, (1994), pp. 609-622.

Shakespeare, William. “Hamlet.” The Complete Pelican Shakespeare. New York: Penguin Group, (1969), pp. 930-976.

Sophocles. Antigone, Oedipus the King, Electra. Oxford World’s Classics. Ed. Edith Hall. Oxford University Press, 1998.

Westlund, Joseph. “Ambivalence in the Player’s Speech in Hamlet.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900. Vol. 18, N. 2, (1978), pp. 245-256.