«Romeo and Juliet», William ShakespeareFour days from first sight to the tomb

How long the great love lasts

The Prologue promises the whole story in “the two hours’ traffic of our stage”. But how long does it take in Verona itself? Nobody announces a date; the days come up in passing. In Act 3 Juliet’s father asks what day it is, and Paris answers: “Monday, my lord.” In Act 4 Friar Lawrence tells Juliet “Wednesday is tomorrow”, and promises that his potion will keep her asleep for two and forty hours.

Going by those lines, I put all 24 scenes on their days: 7 on Sunday, 8 on Monday, 4 on Tuesday, 2 on Wednesday and 3 on Thursday. On Sunday morning Romeo is still sighing over another girl, Rosaline. That evening at the Capulets’ feast he sees Juliet, and that night he stands under her balcony. On Monday they are married, at dawn on Tuesday they part, and on Thursday night both lie dead in the tomb. Four days from first sight to the tomb.

The first two days get the most words: Sunday and Monday take 64% of the play. After that time speeds up. Wednesday is left with just two scenes, and in one of them a wedding becomes a funeral: “All things that we ordained festival Turn from their office to black funeral”.

One Monday

Monday has more scenes than any other day: eight of twenty-four. At dawn Romeo runs to Friar Lawrence and asks “That thou consent to marry us today”. The Friar still remembers yesterday’s love: “Is Rosaline, that thou didst love so dear, So soon forsaken?” At noon the Nurse comes to Romeo to settle it, in the afternoon Juliet goes to confession, and in the Friar’s cell they are married.

About an hour later, in the square, Tybalt kills Mercutio and Romeo kills Tybalt, Juliet’s cousin. Romeo is counting the time too: Tybalt, he says, is the man “that an hour Hath been my cousin”. The Prince banishes him from Verona. And Juliet, when she hears, calls herself “thy three-hours’ wife”.

And late that night her father, who only on Sunday told Paris “Let two more summers wither in their pride”, asks what day it is. “Monday, my lord.” “Monday! Ha, ha! Well, Wednesday is too soon, A Thursday let it be.” So on one and the same Monday Juliet becomes Romeo’s wife and Paris’s bride-to-be, and she only learns of the second the next morning.

“Wisely and slow”

The word “haste” turns up fourteen times in the play. At dawn on Monday Romeo hurries the Friar: “I stand on sudden haste.” Friar Lawrence answers with a line that could stand over the whole play: “Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.” Juliet herself takes fright on the balcony: it is “too rash, too unadvis’d, too sudden, Too like the lightning”.

Except that Friar Lawrence doesn’t dawdle either: he marries them that same day, and on Tuesday he comes up with the plan of the vial. Juliet is to consent to marry Paris, drink the potion “tomorrow night”, on Wednesday, lie as if dead for forty-two hours and wake in the tomb, where his letters will bring Romeo. But her father is in a bigger hurry: when he hears she consents, he moves the wedding a day closer, “I’ll have this knot knit up tomorrow morning”. So Juliet drinks the potion a night earlier than the Friar planned.

One person in all Verona is in no hurry: the Nurse. Juliet sends her to Romeo at nine, and at noon she still isn’t back: “from nine till twelve Is three long hours”. When the Nurse does come, she spends half the scene complaining she’s out of breath, until Juliet tells her the excuse is longer than the news.

Four scenes for two

I counted where Romeo and Juliet actually speak to each other. Four scenes out of twenty-four: the feast, the balcony, the wedding and Tuesday’s dawn. Together that’s 1,873 words out of 23,633, less than a tenth of the play. Their first conversation, at the feast, is a sonnet: fourteen lines shared between two, ending in a kiss.

Their last is at dawn on Tuesday: was it the nightingale or already the lark? Romeo climbs down from her window, and Juliet, looking down at him, says what will come true on Thursday: “Methinks I see thee, now thou art so low, As one dead in the bottom of a tomb.”

They never speak to each other again. In the tomb they are together once more, and both of them speak, but apart: while Romeo speaks, Juliet sleeps, and when she wakes, Romeo is dead.

A few minutes

Thursday night. Romeo goes down into the Capulets’ tomb and looks at Juliet. He knows nothing of the potion, only that she is dead, and still he sees it: “Beauty’s ensign yet Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks, And death’s pale flag is not advanced there.” He even asks her why she is still so fair. Then he drinks the poison: “Thus with a kiss I die.”

Now Friar Lawrence comes into the churchyard with a lantern. Romeo’s man tells him his master has been inside “Full half an hour”. The Friar goes in, sees the blood and the dead, and at once: “The lady stirs.” Later he tells the Prince he came “some minute ere the time Of her awaking”, and Romeo was already dead.

Juliet wakes, asks where her Romeo is, and finds a cup in his hand. She kisses him, hoping some poison is left on his lips, and says: “Thy lips are warm!” For four days everyone in this play was in a hurry, and at the very end they were a few minutes short.

Verdict

Read it. Not for the balcony, everyone knows that already, but for the tomb, where a few minutes decide everything. And for the way the play is built: Shakespeare speeds time up all the way through, so that at the end there isn’t enough of it.

At school it’s taught as a story of eternal love. To me it’s about a love Verona never gives time: four days, four conversations and not one minute to spare. One point off for the Nurse: the only person in Verona in no hurry at all, and she’s the one carrying the news. Though there’s no funnier scene in the play.