The Oedipus complex

The Oedipus complex

The Oedipus Complex is a psychoanalytical theory created by Sigmund Freud (pictured) and derived heavily from Sphocles play. Influenced by Freud, many later critics (and forward to this day) find elements of the Oedipus Complex in the relationship between Hamlet and Gertrude.
The theory dictates that all children feel sexual desire for the parent of the opposite sex and the death of the parent of the same sex, and is today believed to be manifest only in very young children. In terms of the play, the Oedipus Complex is extremely unhelpful: firstly, because Oedipus is not a child when Sophocles’ play takes place, but secondly (and more importantly) because the play rests on the fact that he is unaware of the identity of his parents when he respectively murders and sleeps with them.
For the Greeks, the word 'tragedy' was used much as we use the word 'play' - but it does not carry the same implications of our modern word 'tragedy'.
In Athens, the performance of tragedies took place as part of festivals - the most famous being the City Dionysia, a festival which worshipped the god Dionysos. Dionysos is the god of wine, of revelry, of theatre, of frenzy and of ambiguity - a reading of Euripides Bacchae goes much of the way to explain some of the logic behind his association with the Greek theatre.