Cain, the First Murderer

Hamlet had to have been familiar with GENESIS 4 to respond the way he did, in the first scene of Act V, to the gravedigger’s handling of a skull: “That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once: / how the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were / Cain’s jaw-bone, that did the first murder!”  Ancient tradition held that Cain used the jawbone of a donkey to murder Abel.