Yesterday and today, we covered one of my most favorite mini-lessons in the Shakespeare unit. It tags onto the end of one day’s work and requires a couple of minutes the next day to answer the question, “Just how much time has passed in this play?” For several scenes in the play, it’s a little unclear to a reader who is not looking for clues, but they’re there, scattered throughout, but it doesn’t become obvious until 3.4, when Paris comes to talk to Capulet again about Juliet’s hand, we know it’s late, for Capulet explains, “‘Tis very late, she’ll not come down to-night: / I promise you, but for your company, / I would have been a-bed an hour ago.” But late on what day? We get the answer shortly when Capulet, deciding when the wedding will be, asks what the day is: “Monday, my lord,” responds Paris.

Juliet won’t come down because she’s weeping for Tybalt, or so the Capulets think. In the scene before, she learns of Tybalt’s death, and while she’s initially upset with Romeo, she reconsiders: ” Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband? / Ah, poor my lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name, / When I, thy three-hours wife, have mangled it?” She explains that she’s only been his wife for three hours, so the wedding had to have taken place sometime after 12 but before the evening. We know that Romeo doesn’t fight Tybalt because he’s now related to him:

I do protest, I never injured thee,
But love thee better than thou canst devise,
Till thou shalt know the reason of my love:
And so, good Capulet,–which name I tender
As dearly as my own,–be satisfied.

This means that the fight between Romeo and Tybalt happens after twelve but before the evening, because Juliet says she’s only been Romeo’s wife for three hours. But how do we get the twelve I keep referring to? Simple: in 2.4, when Juliet is waiting for the nurse’s return, she complains that “from nine till twelve / Is three long hours, yet she is not come.” We know from the balcony scene in 2.2 that Romeo is supposed to meet with someone to arrange the wedding at nine the next morning.

But how do we know for certain that the balcony scene was the night before? Simple: when Friar Laurence makes his entrance in 2.3, it’s clearly dawn:

The grey-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night,
Chequering the eastern clouds with streaks of light,
And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels
From forth day’s path and Titan’s fiery wheels:
Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye,
The day to cheer and night’s dank dew to dry,
I must up-fill this osier cage of ours
With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers.

Shortly after that, he encounters Romeo at his door and pondering how it is that Romeo is up so early, he suggests “then here I hit it right, / Our Romeo hath not been in bed to-night.” Romeo confirms that he’s been with Juliet the night before and hasn’t gone to bed: “That last is true; the sweeter rest was mine.” This puts the balcony scene and the party on Sunday evening/night.

When Lady Capulet comes to speak initially to Juliet about Paris, she asks, “What say you? can you love the gentleman? This night you shall behold him at our feast.” This would put the scene in which it happens, 1.3, sometime in the late morning or early afternoon on Sunday.

In the scene before, Paris asks Capulet for Juliet’s hand. Capulet refuses the offer, insisting that they wait two more years. He then tries a deflationary tactic:

This night I hold an old accustom’d feast,
Whereto I have invited many a guest,
Such as I love; and you, among the store,
One more, most welcome, makes my number more.

This happens concurrently with Lady Capulet’s discussion with Juliet or just before it. We know that Capulet’s conversation with Paris is almost immediately after the opening fight scene because he explains, “But Montague is bound as well as I, / In penalty alike; and ’tis not hard, I think, / For men so old as we to keep the peace.” So the fight that opens the play must have happened Sunday morning.

Benvolio, in explaining to the Montagues in 1.1 why Romeo was fortunately not involved in the fray explains to Lady Montague,

Madam, an hour before the worshipp’d sun
Peer’d forth the golden window of the east,
A troubled mind drave me to walk abroad;
Where, underneath the grove of sycamore
That westward rooteth from the city’s side,
So early walking did I see your son:

With all this in mind, we returned today to 3.5 and examined the opening lines: “Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day: / It was the nightingale, and not the lark, That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear.” Clearly, it’s morning, but just to make it clear, Shakespeare has Juliet later say ask, “Who is’t that calls? is it my lady mother? / Is she not down so late, or up so early?” So it’s early Tuesday morning.

They met Sunday evening.

“How many of you thought it was a matter of weeks that had passed?” I asked, as I do every year. Most hands go up. “It puts the whole thing in a new perspective, doesn’t it?”