Comparing Sophocles’ “Oedipus Tyrannus” and Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”

Compare your sense of how the technique of characterization is developed in Sophocles’ “Oedipus Tyrannus” and Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.”

Ask yourself: are the characters in this play deep or shallow, sharply specific or generalized? What is their inner life like? How is Oedipus like Hamlet, and how are they different? What do the different places and functions of characters in these two plays tell us about the culture the play emerges from?