Oedipus Rex, by Sophocles

Part 2: Hamlet and Oedipus

More of This Feature • Part I: The King Misbehaves

Related Resources • Oedipus Net Links • Read Oedipus Rex, by Sophocles • Seneca's Oedipus Rex, translated by Michael Rutenberg

Elsewhere on the Web • Freud: Interpretation of Dreams

Shakespeare's Hamlet is sometimes compared to Oedipus on the basis of the son's love for his mother

In Oedipus Rex the basic wish-phantasy of the child is brought to light and realized as it is in dreams; in Hamlet it remains repressed, and we learn of its existence- as we discover the relevant facts in a neurosis- only through the inhibitory effects which proceed from it.
Freud: Interpretation of Dreams

but there's another more visible similarity. In the end of Hamlet and in the end of Oedipus the lives of the major characters have either ended or been irrevocably destroyed.

Prince Fortinbras

Take up the bodies: such a sight as this Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss. Go, bid the soldiers shoot.
[A dead march. Exeunt, bearing off the dead bodies; after which a peal of ordnance is shot off]
Act V Scene ii Hamlet

In Hamlet it's Fortinbras and in Oedipus Tyrannus it's Jocasta's brother Creon who comes in to clean up the mess. Oedipus renounces his throne transferring its power to Creon whose responsibility it becomes to punish the person responsible for the Theban pollution (in other words, Oedipus).

Although he's given up the throne, Oedipus has difficulty accepting the consequences. He tries to persuade Creon to punish him the way he thinks he deserves, but Creon won't do as Oedipus asks. He doesn't send the self-mutilated man into exile. Instead he leads a humiliated Oedipus inside the house. Unlike his brother-in-law/nephew, Creon doesn't try to defy the fates; he says Oedipus must ask the gods.

Oedipus

Send me from the land an exile.

Creon

Ask this of the gods, not me.

Oedipus

But I am the gods' abhorrence.

Creon

Then they soon will grant thy plea.

Oedipus

Lead me hence, then, I am willing.

Creon

Come, but let thy children go.

Oedipus

Rob me not of these my children!

Creon

Crave not mastery in all, For the mastery that raised thee was thy bane and wrought thy fall.

Even after all this, Oedipus doesn't learn his lesson -- that he can't be in control. Even after he's renounced the throne, he continues to try to exert control over Creon and his daughters' destiny; first by asking Creon to adopt them so they'll have a legitimate and normal genealogy, and then (in contradiction to what he has already asked) by asking that his children not be taken from him. Oedipus, a man smart enough to know the answer to the riddle of the sphinx, is tragically incapable of learning from his mistakes.