In William Shakespeare's Hamlet, he creates different scenes that contrast the previous scene. The common reader has preconceived perceptions of a graveyard. Those opinions consist of mostly unpleasant thoughts and images. Before the graveyard, Shakespeare created a dramatic scene which consisted of Queen Gertrude telling Laertes that his sister, Ophelia had drowned. Gertrude says, "One woe doth tread upon another's heel, / So fast they follow. Your sister's drown"d Laertes" (4.7.163-164). Shakespeare has created a somber mood already which adds to 5.1 right off by talking about a graveyard. However, it is at this point that Shakespeare twists the play's mood.
Act five, scene one, opens with two "gravediggers" who are considered "clowns." The purpose of these characters is to act as a comic relief. This is necessary after the tension of Ophelia's death and the tone of most of the play. Just a few lines before, Queen Gertrude gave a very depressing image of Ophelia, "When down her weedy trophies and herself / Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide, / And mermaid-like awhile they bore her up" (4.7.174-176). Right after the reader reads this image, the play moves to "clowns" digging a grave. They go back-and-forth discussing why the corpse is being given a "Christian Burial." The "clowns" chatter amongst each other about the situation, "Is she to be buried in Christian burial when / she willfully seeks her own salvation? / I tell thee she is, therefore make her grave / straight. The crowner hath sate on her and finds it Christian burial" (5.1.1-5). The chit-chat about something that meant so much to another person previously, creates a little humor for the reader. It makes the reader lighten up about something that was formerly so dramatic. .
The "clowns" continue to talk to each other, still pondering why she was receiving a real burial, one of the "gravediggers" attempts to explain it some different language, " It must be [se offendendo], it cannot be else" (5.
