OPHELIA        My honoured lord, you know right well you did,

And with them words of so sweet breath composed

As made these things more rich. Their perfume lost,

Take these again, for to the noble mind

Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.

There, my lord.          (3.1.96-101)

Ophelia has to plough on, she’s started this painful thing, the only way is through. And she can be angry—stop messing around—or playful—ah, you idiot, don’t be daft—or simply baffled. I mostly think the last; she tries to reason with him. My honoured lord (she’s so polite, knowing all the time that her father and Claudius are listening) you know right well you did. You know you gave me things, these things, look! (As she looks at them, shows them to him, she must look at them too, feel them in her hands, reconnect with them—remember.) And when you gave me all these, there were with them words of so sweet breath composed as made these things more rich. Oh God, the things you wrote to me and said to me, the way you looked at me as you said them. You were so lovely to me… and I can’t look at these things now without replaying it all in my head; these things—even the most trivial—they’re beautiful and precious because of the things you said, the things we did. These are more than things; these are memories; these are US.

But now—she has to steel herself, again, again—their perfume lost, take these again. I have to forget, I have to reject these things, see them as painful (they are), as having bad associations too. They’re like faded flowers. (A faded corsage, a rose among them? Too literal? But some typical lovers’ gifts were scented, especially gloves.) Please, take these again. Just take them. For to the noble mind rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. If the giver behaves badly, then the gifts lose their value. It can be played as an aphoristic couplet Ophelia’s had prepared, a bit of moralising to draw a line with—or as spontaneous, desperate, here’s a trite thing to hide behind—or even as a kind of game, a snatch of empty rhetoric offered to the great rhetorician, the sort of banter they used to play with, sharing couplets, finishing each other’s sentences; they used to LAUGH together at this sort of thing, because it sounds like Polonius.

There, my lord. She holds her little bundle out again. Please?