RALPH:  Sarah, at the beginning of this scene, Ophelia returns Hamlet’s gifts and perhaps his love letters- has this always been such a classic breakup move?

SARAH:  Good question, Ralph.  In fact, it might help us see that this is a fairly serious breakup.  In the Elizabethan period, returning gifts like this could have been a sign of breaking off an engagement to be married – in other words, maybe Hamlet and Ophelia were getting quite serious.

RALPH:  But then Hamlet’s reply – I never gave you aught – might suggest that he’s refusing to acknowledge that the engagement ever happened.

SARAH:  True enough. Either way, it makes us wonder all the more about the actual state of Hamlet and Ophelia’s romance when all of this began.

RALPH:  Hamlet makes so many sexual innuendos regarding Ophelia during the play – and often, like in this scene, they’re pretty cruel. Are we supposed to be wondering whether their relationship is physical?  Are they lovers?  How likely would this be in Elizabethan England?

SARAH:  It’s quite difficult to know, Ralph – difficult to known in the case of young, unmarried upper-class couples around 1600, and difficult to know just in general – how would one get accurate data on such a question? Nevertheless, one estimate is that 20% of brides were pregnant at this time at their weddings.

RALPH:  Well, we know one case fairly certainly, don’t we? An 18-year-old William Shakespeare, who appears to have had a shotgun wedding with a pregnant 26 year old farm girl from down the road.

SARAH:  In the Danish legend on which the Hamlet is based, the question of a physical relationship is much more explicit, and also more important to the plot.

RALPH:  In that story, the Ophelia character is not Hamlet’s girlfriend at all.  The king’s agents arrange an private encounter between Hamlet and a young woman who they’ve instructed to seduce Hamlet. If he gives in to this temptation, they will know that he is faking his madness.

SARAH:  The young woman does manage to seduce Hamlet, but doesn’t want to expose him to the king, and so she manages to elude the king’s agents and she later tells the king that Hamlet resisted her charms.

SARAH:  Wow! Shakespeare's Hamlet is pretty tame in comparison!