The Oedipus Legend and ‘Oedipus Rex’

As is well known, the story of Oedipus' life is presented in Sophocles' ‘Oedipus King’ in a context that is not the same as that of the legend. According to what psychoanalysis teaches us such a fact, even characteristic enough for a dramatic plot, must have some special meaning, and this is what we endeavour to make clear in the present paper. Let us remember that in Hamlet, on the contrary, the motives of parricide and incest are dealt with in the same order as the events actually occur in the Oedipus legend. In Shakespeare's drama the action begins shortly after the death of the hero's father, and the revelation of both crimes- parricide and incest - though attenuated and projected onto Claudius, are soon revealed to the audience. Another difference is that here the two actions are joint by an intentional link and this as early as the moment is come for Hamlet to hear the revelation of his father's ghost. The murder of the late King, a fact here standing for parricide, has been perpetrated by Claudius in order to marry the Queen, a fact here standing for incest. In ‘Oedipus King’ such a link is repressed, and besides that the action of the play begins many years after both parricide and incest have been actually committed.

Freud, when comparing Hamlet and Oedipus in a famous passage of his ‘Interpretation of Dreams', refers to the fact that in Shakespeare's tragedy both crimes are presented in some ‘attenuated’ form and projected on another character of the play - namely Claudius. - as the result of a more intense repression in modern man as compared with that of