Act 5, Scene 1, Hamlet Summary

As they dig a grave in a churchyard, two Gravediggers make blackly humorous comments about what constitutes a suicide and about whether a church or a gallows or a grave is the more strongly built and more lasting construction. As Hamlet and Horatio appear, one of the Gravediggers goes and the second Gravedigger sings quietly as he works, throwing up skulls. Hamlet watches, commenting on the lives that once inhabited the skulls and the casual disdain with which the Gravedigger treats them. During bantering conversation with the Gravedigger, he learns that another skull, brought up by the Gravedigger, is that of Yorick, Hamlet's father's jester. Hamlet contemplates the skull and the life that its owner used to have, leading him to further contemplation of how even great men must die.

His thoughts are interrupted by Ophelia's funeral procession, attended...