If someone compelled me to break up with someone I loved and insisted I return his letters, I think those letters would feel hot in my hand. I’d know I had to give them away – something has convinced me that it must be done – but if I’d experienced those letters with all the love and sweetness, if I’d cherished them, if I’d slept with them under my pillow, smelled them, run my fingers over them, wrapped them up in ribbon to be assured none would be lost, I’m not sure I could surrender them without a little internal fight.
My hand might be offering them, but I might not loose my fingers quite enough to let them go or I might offer them in such a way that brought them closer to me, rather than far away. Or I might turn away as I offered them, hoping not to witness their loss. I might, in fact, not offer them up honestly. I couldn’t. Not if I loved them.

What the heck does a noble mind have to do with anything? (Aside from rhyming with unkind and giving this line the feel of an ending.) Rich gifts go sour on any kind of mind if the giver turns into a jerk. If you gave me a car and then turned into an asshole, I’d want to sell that car, stat, no matter whether my mind was noble or not.

But Ophelia uses this “noble mind” phrase at least twice in this scene. This noble mind appears to be hers. The next noble mind is his. Noble minds are clearly important to our girl, Ophelia. And I wonder if this is her value or her father’s. It’s not a phrase I can think of him using, so it may well be her own. The idea of that pleases me – since Ophelia seems to have so little that is truly hers. Even a verbal tic would be a little something.

This sort of thing just doesn’t work with texts and emails. While we exchange probably more with the written word than ever before, we have lost the material pleasures and pain of written communication. In order to return someone’s “letters” today, you’d have to first print out all the stuff and you’d have to delete them from your email program and your server, maybe and my devices that collect emails, like your phone or your tablet.

A love letter used to smell good. It felt good. You could hold it in your hand and know that the paper you held had been held by your beloved. The ink you run your finger over came from a pen between the beloved’s fingers. Did he scent this paper or is this just how his rooms smell or him? You could bind letters up with ribbon and treasure them as a series, watch the handwriting shift and charge from letter to letter, notice the use of a different pen, different doodles in the margins.
A packet of letters could live, treasured, in an underwear drawer or a treasure box. A secret pocket, perhaps or under a pillow. Paper. Ink. Atmosphere.

I used to be a real sucker for words. Even if I didn’t believe them, they could still go straight to my guts. A man who could say flattering things to me sweetly and believably could send me into a flustered happy flurry. I treasured cards and letters and poems and songs.

I’m partnered now with a man who mostly calls me nice. I should say here that “nice” is extremely loaded for me. I have hated being called nice since the 4th grade when almost every student in Mrs. Wheeler’s class wrote “Emily is nice” when called upon to write something about me. I don’t particularly relish “nice” even now.

But flattering words aren’t this man’s cup of tea and I can somehow do a translation trick of hearing “I love you” when he says, “You’re nice.”

And his “You’re nice” is backed by a thousand acts of kindness and understanding that no one with a flattering tongue or flattering could ever even approach.

So even with words that aren’t particularly meaningful, he still manages to give me some of that sweet breath. 

My friend’s wife cheated on him – broke his heart and the ground on which he stood. In the midst of all the betrayals, the little cruelties, the thoughtless vanities, the unconcerned callousness, one of the most painful things is a card she gave him before it all came to light.

It is full of tenderness and affectionate language and he quotes it now, with shock waves of pain, that radiate through the phone.
I can imagine that he might well appreciate returning this card and all other sweetly penned bits of paper. Even better than burning them, returning letters might give at least a little bit of satisfaction, a little like unburdening yourself and giving it to the person who gave it to you.

Really? How longéd long could that be? She just started refusing his letters and access, etc – a few days before it would seem. Has it been ages, really? Did she long to return them as soon as they were sent?

It raises some questions for me, this line. Is it a word for word line reading from her father? Did Polonius drill her on her opening lines before sending her out as Hamlet bait?
What exactly does Polonius think is going to happen? That Ophelia returns Hamlet’s letters and he falls on his knees with love? That somehow Hamlet will read them to her, beg her to stay, try to win her back? Even if this love scene weren’t being observed (which, very likely, both Hamlet and Ophelia are aware of) it would not necessarily prove a love relationship. Sometimes when you look at people breaking up, they don’t resemble the people they were before at all. It’s sometimes hard to imagine them having been lovers at all as the darkness pours in – the vitriol, the heartbreak, the recriminations, whatever.

I would like to see a scene in which Polonius rehearses what he thinks this scene will be, where he plays Hamlet and tries out all of theories while making Ophelia say her lines properly.