Sophocles' Oedipus and Shakespeare's Hamlet both contain the basic elements of tragedy; although the Shakespearean tragedy expanded it's setting far beyond that of the ancient Greek tragedy. The tragic hero of Hamlet finds himself burdened with the task of avenging his father's death from the start of the play, and is not himself the source of the pollution of regicide, while Oedipus is the unwitting fashioner of his own doom, which is unveiled to him through recognition and repentance. Oedipus foretells his tragic situation while speaking to the people of Thebes. The city suffers because of the pollution of Oedipus, and irony is exemplified when Oedipus suggests that by avenging Laius he will protect himself, or that by getting children upon Jocasta, the dead king's wife, he will be taking the place of the son of Laius, which, unknowingly, is himself. This irony peaks when Oedipus calls on the prophet Tiresias to help uncover the murder of Laius and seek an cure to the plague; the metaphor of vision is ironic in that the blind Tiresias can see what the seemingly brilliant Oedipus has overlooked, namely the king's crimes of incest and murder. Sophocles installs the other major ingredient of the tragic equation, the purging emotion. The hubris of Oedipus is demolished when he confides in Jocasta concerning the predictions of the seer Tiresias; she tells him the story of the murder of Laius, and as she speaks, Oedipus comes to recognize the scene and circumstances of the regicide as being the same as those encountered on the road to Thebes. The full realizations of his doings come to him, and he cries out to Jocasta. He faces the shepherd who found the child Oedipus, and who now reveals that the child was the same infant who was cast out to the wolves by Laius; Laius had feared the fulfillment of a prophecy that he would die by his own son's hands, and Oedipus now sees that the prophecy has indeed come true, for he has killed h...