Many critics have commented on the underlying motif of the memento mori in Hamlet, which can even be heard in the Ghost's injunction: "Remember me". This article argues that the play must be read in the context of the death arts that flourished in the wake of the fifteenth-century Ars Moriendi. Using Christopher Sutton's 1600 treatise, Disce Mori, Learne to Die, it shows that concerns with the "bad death" offer a framework that can help us understand Hamlet's "crisis" and its partial resolution, from inordinate mourning to a form of acceptance of his own death.