A tragedy is a play that has a tragic and somber ending. Oedipus the king by Sophocles and Hamlet by Shakespeare are tragedies. In classical tragedies, the conflict between fate and free will has been studied and it has been found out that every tragedy has a struggle between the human ability to accept fate and the inner desire to take control of their destiny. Sophocles and Shakespeare agree that fate has power over free will and this is expressed in their tragedies, Oedipus the king and Hamlet respectively. In Oedipus the king, fate has a lot of power and completely overpowers free will such that the more the human being tries to escape his fate, the more he gets deeper into the same fate. Sophocles creates a character that struggles against fate but ultimately surrenders to the hand of fate (Dallas, p. 23). This paper will carry a deeper analysis of Hamlet by Shakespeare and Oedipus the king by Sophocles with a view of studying the relationship between fate and free will.
Oedipus the king is more tragic than Hamlet because the main character in Hamlet was doomed right from birth. The fate of Oedipus is foretold by a prophet. The prophet foretells that when Oedipus becomes a man, he will kill his dad and marry his mum. That is why his parents decide to have him murdered immediately after his birth so that the prophecy would not be fulfilled. The person his parents hire to kill him does not kill him. He throws the baby into the forest. The baby is picked by herders and is taken to the royal family in Corinth. The family raises the baby like their own son. Oedipus learns of the prophecy when he grows up and runs away from the royal family in Corinth. He did not want to kill his father, but he did not know that the Corinthian king was not his father. He decides to run to Thebes and on his way; he kills his real father after a fight. This is where the prophecy begins to take shape. When he gets to Thebes, he becomes very popular and is enthroned as the king. The king had been killed by Oedipus and the people of Thebes did not know that Oedipus was the murderer neither did Oedipus himself know that the person he had killed was the king of that place. The traditions in Thebes dictated that the King should marry the widowed queen and Oedipus marries the queen of Thebes, without knowing that the king is his own mother. After serious investigations into the death of the queen are carried out, it is found out that Oedipus had killed the king. After a through analysis of the things that has taken place in his life, he realizes that the prophecy has already been fulfilled. He later requests for his own banishment because of the shame that had gripped him.
The tragedy in Hamlet can be explained by the intertwining contrasts in the play. The first intertwining contrast in is evident when the king says “I am not in a position to dream of what might be wrong with Hamlet, apart from the death of his father” (Shakespeare, p. 23). The king is the one who had killed his dad and is trying to test whether Hamlet knows about it and whether there is an action he is intending to take.Hamlet is pretending to be mad and this pretense is the one that shapes the scene and the rest of the play. Hamlet says, “There is a method in my insanity” (Shakespeare, p. 45). The scene continues from the contrasts that had developed between Hamlet and Lattés and pours into the debacle with the envoys from Norway. The latter is the grievous son of a departed monarch whose uncle stole the position he was supposed to occupy in the Monarchy after the death of his father. He is pursuing revenge, while Hamlet is in a pit of desperation and indecision. Claudius is not worried that a large, hostile army would be passing through his territory and is more worried about Hamlet’s insanity. This highlights an important situation that will have an impact on the outcomes of the subsequent scenes and the development of the plot. However, Claudio who is sane still has fears about internal threats. The other important development is the arrival of the two most mysterious characters in Hamlet; Guildenstern and Rosencrantz. These two are the puppets of royal family and they live in fear of going against the powers that be. They also fear that they may subconsciously give out secrets about the royal family. One of the most important things about the two is their striking resemblance where the author leaves them undifferentiated (Foster, p.89).
Any attempt to understand his behavior is complicated by his uncooperative stunts. Is hamlet mad or pretending to be mad? This is another question that the play raises. If at all his behavior that makes people declare him a lunatic is just pretense, then he must be a very perfect pretender because his perceived weak state of sanity manages to repulse the image of his dad’s ghost. To most critics, hamlet is not pretending ; he is insane but a deep look into some of the sharp observations that are made by him in the perceived mental state betray him because the pretense comes out Cleary to a keen critic. When the players enter, Hamlet requests them to give a passionate speech and in fact tells them that he wants the tale in Aeneid about Priam’s daughter. Hamlet starts reciting the tale, but the first player starts another tale about a woman mourning her departed husband. He thought that this would interest Hamlet because he was also in a state of mourning. However, the two forms of mourning are different and they explore the issues of play- acting in life and real actions in life. The tears that one sheds when acting in theater are not the same kind of tears that one sheds when a loved one has died. This is because the former is caused by imaginary circumstances while the latter is caused by real life occurrences. This is why the author’s intention of blurring the line between theatre and real life ultimately fails because the audience can react to emotional situations even though they don’t have the real knowledge about the situations. The characters in the play could be tricked by the stunts made by Hamlet but the audience already knows that he is play- acting, which means that the line between reality and acting remains.
The main point of concern in this speech is the point where Hamlet ridicules the actor who weeps for the imaginary Hecuba. Hamlet himself, who should be weeping because of the departure of his father, does not weep. However, this ridicule is faint because Hamlet is himself an actor in life and the nature of theatre grief and actual grief can only be understood from a philosophical perspective. Soliloquy serves as foundation of a compelling plot that continues to make more revelations that shape the book. This scene is the one that exposes the strengths and the frailties of the major characters and it’s the one that reveals who Hamlet really is.
Hamlet did not know that his life would be tragic like Oedipus knew. Nobody let him know about his fate. His life changes when his uncle kills his father and takes over as the king. His uncle just wanted to marry Hamlet’s mother and that is why he killed the king. The various deaths that take place in the two plays characterize the tragic nature of the play. The most disheartening death is the suicide of the queen after she discovers that she had married his own son. Each of the two heroes learns a life lesson. In Oedipus the King, the hero learns that pride can deceive one to believe that fate can be altered though interventions by man (Brunner, p. 76). In Hamlet, Shakespeare teaches the hero a lesson that for a person to remain in control of his choices they must fight tooth and nail so that if fate defeats them, they can decide how the fate will defeat them.
Works Cited
- Brunner, Mike. King Oedipus Retried. London: Rosenberger & Krausz, 2000.
- Dallas, Ian. Oedipus and Dionysus. Granada: Freiburg Press, 1991.
- Foster, Thomas. How to Read Literature like a Professor.NY:Harper Collins,2003
- Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Ed. Kim F. Hall. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004.