SOURCE: Tanselle, G. Thomas. “Time in Romeo and Juliet.” Shakespeare Quarterly 15, no. 4 (autumn 1964): 349-61.

[In the following essay, Tanselle focuses on Romeo and Juliet's references to time in relation to its themes of fate, youth versus age, and haste.]

It is conventional for editors and critics to point out that in Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare compressed into a matter of days the action that took nine months in Brooke's Romeus and Juliet. They also note that there are a great many time references in the play, and, on the basis of these refererences, they construct a calendar for the events of the plot. But, even though allusions to time are made with great precision in the play, critics are not yet agreed about such a seemingly elementary chronological point as the number of days the plot covers. P. A. Daniel, for example, declared in 1878 that the play ends “early in the morning of the sixth” day,¹ and he is followed in this belief by John Munro, among others, who defines the time as “less than six days”.² Caroline Spurgeon, differing only slightly from these critics in her time analysis, says that the lovers meet on Sunday and die on Thursday night,³ and G. B. Harrison also finds that the action covers five days.⁴ Raymond Chapman, however, believes that the play ends early Thursday morning and therefore that the events have occurred in four days,⁵ and Granville-Barker also takes this point of view.⁶ The fullest of these discussions are the ones by Daniel and Chapman, although Daniel's is nothing more than a summary of the events taking place on each day and Chapman's a brief note making no attempt to list every time reference. W. W. Lloyd in 1856 recognized that this “breathless rapidity of incidents, this hasty interchange” is the “ruling motive with which all the accompaniments harmonize”.⁷ Recently Brents Stirling has especialy developed the idea of the “haste theme” as a key to the play,⁸ but he is not concerned with arranging a chronology of events.

Despite the attention which the time question has received, no one has gathered together all the precise time references and examined them. Such a list forms an impressive collection—partly because of its size (showing the extent to which the play is saturated with time allusions) and partly because the precision of the references makes it possible to know the exact time of day of almost every episode. We shall be concerned here, therefore, not so much with general expressions of temporal relationships (such as “soon”, “early”, “late”, “old”, “slow”, “fast”, and the like—which Stirling takes up) as with exact references to particular hours, days, months, and years.

However, the numerous time references do more than merely provide a timetable for the plot. Their unusual frequency and specificity would indicate that they are especially important to Shakespeare in this play and that they are used in other ways than as a calendar. For one thing, they contribute to the effect produced by the dominant imagery of light and darkness; allusion to the hour seems a natural way of intensifying the contrast between day and night, or brightness and dullness. In addition, time references are used to further the characterizations—for example, when Romeo declares that time passes slowly for him in Rosaline's absence, or when Juliet wishes night to come quickly since it will bring Romeo. Time references also contribute to the sense of foreboding which permeates the play, especially through figurative expressions involving day, night, and stars. Finally, the insistence on the time of day increases the reader's awareness that he is watching two impetuous young lovers rushing precipitously through a series of events; Shakespeare does not allow us to forget for a moment that his version of the story involves only a few days.

The fast pace of the events in this love affair is constantly contrasted to the more deliberate action of the rest of the world. Raymond Chapman has pointed out that behind the repeated comments about the hour lies the suggestion that a longer time has elapsed, and he calls this Shakespeare's use of “double time” (a term which Granville-Barker also uses in this connection). His evidence of the “longer time” points to such elements of the play as the Chorus preceding Act II (a technique traditionally used to indicate the passage of time, yet the second act begins where the first act leaves off), the Nurse's comparison of Romeo and Paris (when she has not had time to consider their relative merits), Lady Capulet's statement that Romeo “lives” in Mantua (when he had gone there only the day before), Romeo's immediate expectation of a letter from Friar Laurence (when their plan had involved a longer period of waiting), and Friar John's detention in a house quarantined for the plague (when such detention normally lasted at least twenty-eight days). However, since the short-time references are so precise, we are justified in looking for more exact references to longer periods of time and in feeling that they must serve other purposes than merely to “modify the breathless pace of events and make them more credible.”⁹ Investigation does indeed reveal that the short-time references are played off against equally exact long-time references and that the “double time” serves the further function of contrasting the behavior of young love with the slower and more considered pace of the older generation. Romeo and Juliet speak mainly of days and hours, rarely of months and years as the older characters do. Thus, in the end, the long-time allusions only intensify the speed of the action, rather than make it more credible, and play an important part in creating the atmosphere of a headlong rush to doom.

That time is one of the chief concerns of the play becomes clear when one looks at all the time references and considers how they perform these various functions. To begin with, the play opens on Sunday morning (since in III.iv.18, it is then Monday).¹⁰ We know it is not yet afternoon because Prince Escalus tells Capulet to go along with him immediately, while Montague is to report “this afternoon” (I.i.107). Then, sixty lines later, we learn the exact time, for Benvolio tells Romeo that it is “new struck nine” (167). The concern with time is further illustrated by their conversation. Benvolio says “Good morrow” to Romeo, who asks, “Is the day so young?” This exchange leads to the use of “hours” to establish Romeo's mood. It seems later than nine o'clock to him since “sad hours seem long”; Benvolio then wishes to know, “What sadness lengthens Romeo's hours?” (169). In addition to giving the time as nine o'clock, Benvolio has made another specific time reference in this scene—he has already informed Lady Montague that he saw Romeo an hour before sunrise (125).

The second scene takes place on Sunday afternoon, for Capulet's servant and Romeo greet each other with “Godden” (I.ii.57-58), or “Good even” (used any time after noon). Also Capulet, in the opening lines of the scene, implies that Montague has already had his afternoon appointment with the Prince. The conversation, here too, has to do with time since it turns to the subject of Capulet's party. We are told at least four times that the dance will be that evening. Capulet reiterates “this night” three times when he invites Paris to attend (20, 24, 29), and the servant later tells Romeo that the guests are coming “to supper” (78). It is also in this scene that we find the first references to longer periods of time. The extended duration of the feud is alluded to by Paris when he comments that “pity 'tis you lived at odds so long” (5). Paris, however, is another importunate young lover whose eagerness is contrasted to Capulet's deliberation. When Paris asks about his suit, Capulet replies that his answer is “what I have said before” (7), that Juliet “hath not seen the change of fourteen years” (9), and that he will not consider her ready for marriage for another two years (10). This statement should be in the back of the reader's mind in Act III when Capulet, the next day, makes preparations for his daughter's marriage, and in Act IV when he speeds up the planned arrangements. The impatience of the younger generation does, to an extent, upset the time scheme of the older generation.

It is early evening in the following scene, since the Capulet party (which again we are told will be “this night”—I.iii.80) is ready to begin, the guests have arrived, and supper is served (100). This scene makes two contributions to the “longer time”. First, it places the present action in relation to a longer time by indicating the time of year—it is a “fortnight and odd days” (15) to Lammastide (August 1).¹¹ Second, the extended discussion of Juliet's age is a continuation of the older generation's concern with “years” that we saw in Capulet's comments in the last scene. The Nurse even refers to a particular number of years in her figurative expressions: “Now, by my maidenhead at twelve year old” (2). She believes she “can tell [Juliet's] age unto an hour” (11), and she and Lady Capulet agree that Juliet is “not fourteen” (12, 14). Definite numbers of years keep recurring through the Nurse's long speech that follows. Not only does she say twice more that Juliet will be fourteen “of all days in the year, / Come Lammas Eve at night” (16-17, 21), but she comments twice on the “eleven years” that have passed since the earthquake (23, 35).¹² Finally, she believes that she will remember the story about her husband and young Juliet if she lives “a thousand years” (46). The whole speech is an attempt to ascertain the chronology of a long period of time, with numbers of years echoing throughout.

The two remaining scenes of Act I occur Sunday night. In the fourth scene Romeo and his friends need torches (11-12); and at the end of the fifth scene Capulet says “Good night” to Romeo and announces that he is going to bed since “it waxes late” (126-128). Three of the functions of time references are illustrated here. There is the connection of time with foreboding when Romeo fears that he and his friends have arrived “too early” (Benvolio thinks they are “too late”) because some “consequence, yet hanging in the stars” will begin to operate at “this night's revels” (I.iv.105-109). Then there is another of those conversations between older people, emphasizing the attempt to figure out the exact “year” when a particular incident occurred. Capulet and an old man of the family discuss how long it has been since they last danced. The relative believes it has been “thirty years”, but Capulet replies that it can be only about “five and twenty years” because they “masked” at Lucentio's wedding. However, according to “Cousin Capulet”, Lucentio's son is thirty, a fact hard for Capulet to believe since the son “was but a ward two years ago” (I.v.35-42). The entire discussion reminds one of the Nurse's reminiscences about the time of Juliet's birth. Finally, Romeo's first description of Juliet connects the light and darkness imagery with the time—the brightness of Juliet contrasted to “this night” (I.v.46-55).

Two more scenes, the first two in the second act, take place late Sunday night. In the first scene, Mercutio and Benvolio make several references to the night. Mercutio surmises that Romeo “hath stol'n him home to bed” (II.i.4), and, when he gives up looking for Romeo, he wishes Romeo “good night” and heads for his “truckle bed” since it is too cold outdoors “to sleep” (39-40); Benvolio, too, speaks of the “humorous night” and the “dark” as congenial to love (31-32). In the second scene, the balcony scene, the contrast between light and darkness is of course most pronounced, with fifteen references to the present night: “this night” (II.ii.27), “night('s)” (52, 75, 85, 139, 140, 166), “dark night” (106), “good night” (123, 142, 154, 185-186), and “tonight” (87, 117, 126). As the scene ends, it is early Monday morning, for Juliet says, “'Tis almost morning” (177), meaning that it is almost light. A dawn setting is a convenient device for juxtaposing light and darkness, and this scene parallels two others—the dawn scene in the third act and the final scene of the play. A significant indication of the importance of time in the play is that, after the lovers have parted, Juliet calls Romeo back to ask him, “At what o'clock tomorrow / Shall I send to thee?” (168-169). (Earlier she had told him to send “word tomorrow / By one that I'll procure to come to thee, / Where and what time thou wilt perform the rite” [144-146].) Romeo answers with the exact time, “At the hour of nine.” Juliet's comment, “'Tis twenty years till then” (170), reveals her attitude in a time expression and contrasts a long period of time with the short ones they have been considering. In the few instances where young people refer to longer times, they do it figuratively to suggest the slow passage of time. Twenty years seems long to Juliet, yet the elder Capulets can allude casually to the thirty years that have passed since they last danced.

It is Monday morning in the third scene of Act II, and the seven succeeding scenes account for almost every hour of that day. Friar Laurence describes the morning (and contrasts it with night) in the opening lines of the third scene: “The gray-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night.” Romeo, on his arrival, says, “Good morrow, Father” (31), and Friar Laurence asks what “early tongue” is speaking, emphasizing the “earliness” (39) of Romeo's rising (33-42). When Romeo reveals that his plan is to marry Juliet “today” (64), Friar Laurence remarks on the rapidity of Romeo's change of affection (67) and, in the last line of the scene, pronounces what (as Stirling recognizes [p. 17]) is the most explicit statement of the haste theme: “Wisely and slow. They stumble that run fast.” Each generation not only thinks in terms of its own time scheme but tries to persuade other generations to adopt that scheme.

By the time Romeo meets Mercutio and Benvolio on the street in the next scene it is much later Monday morning. Romeo bids “Good morrow” to them and Mercutio speaks of the events of “last night” (II.iv.48, 49), but we learn the exact time only when the Nurse enters. She and Mercutio engage in another of those recurrent conversations about the time, and, in this instance, time is used as the basis of what is perhaps Shakespeare's most famous set of bawdy puns. When the Nurse greets Mercutio with a “good morrow”, he makes a point of correcting her salutation to “good-den”;¹³ she then asks if it is really afternoon, and Mercutio replies that “the bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon” (115-119). He later asks Romeo to go to “dinner” (147). And Romeo tells the Nurse that he and Juliet are to be married “this afternoon” (192) and that he will send a man with a rope ladder “within this hour” (200); before she leaves, the Nurse verifies the time—“This afternoon, sir?” (197). Finally, this scene contains another figurative time expression, again contrasting a short and a long time: Romeo's “A gentleman … that … will speak more in a minute than he will stand to in a month” (155-157).

Since it is noon (“the sun upon the highmost hill / Of this day's journey” [II.v.9-10]), Juliet wonders (in the following scene) why the Nurse has not returned. She had left when the “clock struck nine” and was to be back in “half an hour” (II.v.1-2), but “from nine to twelve / Is three long hours” (10-11). (At the same time, suggestions of the coming night are interspersed in these noon scenes—II.iv.203; v.76, 78.) When Romeo and Juliet meet in Friar Laurence's cell (in II.vi), we know the time is afternoon from the previous arrangement for the marriage (in II.iv.192), but there is no direct reference to the time. Romeo, however, again speaks of the relativity of time when he asserts that future sorrow will not balance the happiness received from “one short minute” (II.vi.5) with Juliet. The next scene, in which Mercutio and Tybalt are killed, also takes place that afternoon (“Gentlemen, good-den” [III.i.41]), early enough to be considered in the heat of the day (“The day is hot”, “now these hot days” [2, 4]) but “an hour” after the marriage ceremony (117). Not only is the heat (with “the mad blood stirring”) appropriate for this quarrel scene but also the foreboding aspect of time is natural in a scene in which there are two deaths. Mercutio sees that one day can make the difference between life and death: “Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man” (101-102). Romeo carries on the fateful implications of a day: “This day's black fate on more days doth depend” (124). And the Prince, speaking of the banished Romeo, makes the time reference to death even shorter: “When he's found, that hour is his last” (200).

The three remaining Monday scenes occur in the evening. Juliet is impatient (in III.ii) for “love-performing night” (5) and develops this idea (in terms of light and darkness) in the speech that follows, using the word “night” eight more times (10, 17, 17, 18, 20, 20, 24, 29). It is obviously not yet night, since Juliet is wishing for it and since the Nurse uses the future tense in referring to it (“your Romeo will be here at night” [140]), but it must be early evening if Juliet has been married three hours (“three-hours wife” [99]). When Romeo, in the following scene, speaks of himself as “An hour but married” (III.iii.66), he is speaking figuratively to suggest the speed of recent events, since it is clearly much later in the evening. The Nurse tells Romeo to “make haste, for it grows very late” (164), and Friar Laurence bids him “good night” (166); yet it is not so late that the watch at the gates has gone on duty (148, 167) nor the Capulet household retired for the night (“bid her hasten all the house to bed” [156]).

“'Tis very late” (III.iv.5), however, in scene four, a brief scene dealing almost exclusively with time. If Paris had not been visiting, Capulet, “would have been abed an hour ago” (7); therefore Paris wishes “good night” (9) to Lady Capulet, who will ask Juliet her opinion “early tomorrow” (10) since Juliet is overcome with sorrow “tonight” (11). Capulet, though, feels that his wife should speak to Juliet “ere you go to bed” (15) and suggests Wednesday as the wedding day (17); but, when he realizes that it is now Monday (18, 19), Wednesday seems “too soon” (19), so the ceremony is set for Thursday. The name of this day reverberates throughout the rest of the scene, appearing five times in eleven lines (20, 20, 28, 29, 30) as Paris and Capulet turn the matter over and verify the date. Capulet asks, “Do you like this haste?” (22), and Paris emphasizes his impatience with a time figure: “I would that Thursday were tomorrow” (29). The entire conversation in this scene is an attempt to decide on the proper times for doing things (such as speaking to Juliet or having the wedding), and Capulet fittingly brings it to a close: “it is so very very late / That we may call it early by and by. / Good night” (34-36).

Tuesday dawn and early morning come in the last scene of Act III, a scene which conveniently illustrates all the uses of time we have been reviewing. The opening thirty-six lines, in which Romeo and Juliet discuss whether or not morning has arrived, form another in that series of what might be called conversations searching for the solution to a time problem. It is characteristic that, while the Nurse and Capulet look for the answers to such questions as the age of Juliet or the age of a relative, Romeo and Juliet deal with a matter of minutes—whether it is night or dawn. Although Juliet believes (or hopes) that it is “not yet near day” (III.v.1), Romeo points to the light in the east (7-8), which Juliet does see but is unwilling to acknowledge as “daylight” (12). As in the earlier morning scene (II.iii), the contrast between light and darkness is brought out through comments on time (for example, in line 9, with its contrast of “Night's candles” and “jocund day”). And this, in turn, leads to the use of light and darkness (or time) to suggest foreboding: “More light and light. More dark and dark our woes!” (36); “Then, window, let day in, and let life out” (41).

Time is once more the basis of a figurative expression in Juliet's remark,

I must hear from thee every day in the hour,
For in a minute there are many days.
Oh, by this count I shall be much in years
Ere I again behold my Romeo!

(44-47)

As usual, “years” is meant figuratively by Juliet to imply a long period of time; and her speech reminds one of Romeo's earlier comments on the relativity of time (I.i.167, 170; II.vi.5). Juliet uses an even shorter period of time to suggest vaguely longer time when she says (of the proposed union with Paris), “Delay this marriage for a month, a week” (201). Even Capulet lists short lengths of time as a way of saying that he has been thinking of Juliet's welfare at every minute: “Day, night, hour, tide, time, work, play …” (178). The name of the fateful day, Thursday, is repeated again in this scene. Juliet is informed four times that her “sudden day of joy” (110) will be “Thursday next” (154), for “Thursday is near” (192); she will be going to church “o' Thursday” (162) or, more specifically, “early next Thursday morn” (113). Finally, this scene naturally contains other clues to the present time of day: “The day is broke” (40); “Are you up?” (65); “up so early?” (67).¹⁴

When Juliet confers with Friar Laurence, it is some time Tuesday afternoon, since the friar says that “Wednesday is tomorrow” (IV.i.90) and since Juliet speaks of the evening in the future tense: “Are you at leisure … now, / Or shall I come to you at evening mass?” (37-38). References to Thursday occur four times again in this scene, as Paris talks enthusiastically of the wedding (1, 20, 42, 49). Friar Laurence, in explaining the operation of his potion, creates what has become the most famous of the time inconsistencies in the play, indeed the crux of the time problem; let us postpone our discussion of the “two and forty hours” (105) until we have established the time scheme for the remainder of the play on other grounds. Tuesday is brought quickly to a close in the next two short scenes, which emphasize “tomorrow” since Capulet decides to have the wedding on Wednesday rather than Thursday. This shift causes “tomorrow” or “tomorrow morning” to be mentioned six times (IV.ii.24, 35, 37, 46; iii.8, 22), even though Lady Capulet still feels that “Thursday” (IV.ii.36) would be soon enough. In the first of these scenes it is “now near night” (IV.ii.39), although Capulet will be too busy to go to bed “tonight” (42), and in the second Lady Capulet says “Good night” (IV.iii.12) to Juliet, who wishes to be alone “tonight” (2) to take the potion.

We next have a brief view of the hurried preparations for the wedding in the Capulet household. It is early Wednesday morning: “The second cock hath crowed, / The curfew bell hath rung, 'tis three o'clock” (IV.iv.3-4); “Good faith, 'tis day” (20). Capulet has been up “all night” (10), and the Nurse advises him to get some rest (7-8). The increasing tempo is suggested by the appearance of the words “make haste” five times in thirteen lines (15, 15, 25, 26, 27). The Nurse, in trying to awaken Juliet on her wedding morning, finds her lifeless form and begins the lamentations of the “woeful day” (IV.v.17-64). The discovery is made early Wednesday, and Paris bemoans “this morning's face” (41); yet it is not too early for the musicians to begin thinking about “dinner” (150).

The most numerous of the difficulties in the time scheme occur in the last act. The day is not made explicit, as it has been up to now, but there are several reasons for supposing that it is Wednesday afternoon when Balthasar reports the news of Juliet's assumed death to Romeo in Mantua. He says that he saw Juliet placed in the tomb and started immediately to inform Romeo (V.i.20-21)—thus the two factors involved are the time of the burial and the distance to Mantua. It seems certain that Juliet is entombed on Wednesday, because Friar Laurence, just after the body is discovered, instructs the Capulets and Paris to “prepare / To follow this fair corse unto her grave” (IV.v.92-93) and Capulet speaks of the “festival” becoming a “black funeral” (85); it should also be remembered that Friar Laurence has predicted how Juliet, in “the manner of our country” (IV.i.109), will be buried immediately. If Balthasar left for Mantua after the burial, then, there is no reason that he should not have arrived there later on Wednesday; the distance between the two towns cannot be great since Balthasar and Romeo in Act V return to Mantua in a few hours.¹⁵ Finally, in the light of the detailed account of time up to this point, it is unlikely that a whole day would be skipped over, entirely unaccounted for. Two specific references in the scene support this view. First, Romeo speaks of the way he has felt “all this day” (V.i.4), which implies that the day is not young; second, after he learns that Juliet is “dead”, Romeo leaves immediately, saying, “Juliet, I will lie with thee tonight” (34), a hint that it is impossible for him to get back to Verona before nightfall.¹⁶

In the absence of specific time references, we can tentatively assign the following scene, in which Friar Laurence learns that his letter has not been delivered, to the same afternoon, Wednesday, following the principle of continuity of action established earlier in the play (Friar Laurence's comment that Juliet will wake in “three hours” [V.ii.25] must be discussed in relation to the “two and forty hours”). If we accept this account of the time, then the last scene of the play opens late Wednesday night and closes at dawn Thursday morning, or exactly four days after the first scene of the play. It is clear that the final scene is set at night from the numerous references to torches or light from torches (V.iii.1, 21, 25, 125, 171) and from the more direct comments involving “night” or “tonight” (14, 17, 21, 121). It is also evident that the scene ends at dawn: the Prince asks, “What misadventure is so early up / That calls our person from our morning rest?” (188-189); Friar Laurence refers to the time his letter was returned as “yesternight” (251)—and he left for the tomb (as we know from the last scene) immediately after Friar John returned the letter; the Prince at the end notices the gloominess of “this morning” (305) since the “sun for sorrow will not show his head” (306).

Such a scheme would satisfactorily account for the time in the play if it were not for three points: the “two and forty hours” of the potion's effectiveness; the “three hours” before Juliet wakes up; and the “two days” (V.iii.176) that Juliet has been buried. These seem to be inconsistent with the time schedule we have just set up. We know that Juliet takes the potion before retiring on Tuesday night—eleven o'clock, let us say. Forty-two hours later would be five o'clock Thursday afternoon—a time which obviously will not fit the final scene, since it would not be dark at five o'clock in the middle of July and since it could not be dawn at the end unless we assume an unduly accelerated representation of the passage of time in this scene. Since Juliet is not found until after three o'clock Wednesday morning, we can assume for argument that she did not take the potion until just before that time; even then she would wake up at nine o'clock Thursday night—or still many hours until dawn. In addition, all this ignores the question of how Friar Laurence knew exactly when Juliet took the potion so that he could make such precise predictions about the time of her awaking: “within this three hours” (V.ii.25); “the prefixèd hour of her waking” (V.iii.253).

These discrepancies have been often noted and often dismissed as unimportant. Grant White, in his 1883 edition, says, “Some critical folk are uneasy because the number of these hours does not exactly agree with the course of events following. No vainer use of time than in endeavor to reconcile S. with himself on such points”; and he concludes that Shakespeare took the forty hours from his source “with no thought of the consequences.”¹⁷ Granville-Barker, similarly, remarks, “It is futile trying to resolve these anomalies. Shakespeare wants a sharp conflict set between youth and age; he emphasizes every aspect of it, and treats time of life much as he treats time of day—for effect” (II, 331). It is true that Shakespeare is contrasting youth and age, but the implication here that he is dealing only in broad effects rather than precise details is not warranted. Discussion of such details is not the useless exercise that Grant White described, for our whole attitude toward the play is involved in the way we handle this point. We have gathered together all the exact time references in order to demonstrate how extraordinarily precise Shakespeare is in this play in details of time and to show how most of these details fit into a consistent scheme. In such a framework, how can we reject the few details which will not fit, with some comment about Shakespeare's concern for general effects rather than “unimportant” details? Rather, it would seem that this is a situation urgently calling for an emendation. Whether the carelessness was originally Shakespeare's or a printer's, it is only through emendation that we can preserve the effectiveness of the technique Shakespeare has used successfully throughout most of the play.

Let us begin by agreeing that the time analysis presented above is essentially correct and that the play covers four days—in other words, that a day has not elapsed between Acts IV and V and that Romeo does learn of Juliet's entombment on Wednesday.¹⁸ Juliet, then, has lain in the tomb since about midday Wednesday, when people begin arriving there Wednesday night. The statement that Juliet “hath lain this two days buried” (V.iii.176) is in accord with the common method of counting days at that time (as Marsh points out, pp. 422-423). Fractions of days interrupted by night were thought of as separate days; thus, since it is early Thursday morning in this scene, Juliet's first day in the tomb is Wednesday and her second Thursday (even though she has been there scarcely over twelve hours when this remark is made).

Next, in regard to the “two and forty hours”, we must reject Maginn's suggestion that we read “two and fifty hours”.¹⁹ Although he reasons that this number of hours would place her waking at the proper time in relation to dawn (approximately three o'clock), it would also place the event on Friday morning, which would mean that a day has passed unnoticed, quite alien to the scheme of time-accounting in the play. (Maginn is reasonable, however, in saying that “those who take the pains of reading this play critically will find that it is dated throughout with a most exact adoption to hours. We can time almost every event. … The same exactness is observed in every part of the play.”) We must also reject Marsh's conjecture of “two and thirty hours” (p. 422) because, unless Juliet went to bed exceedingly early on Tuesday night, this reckoning would set her waking at too late an hour Thursday morning. Marsh himself places her waking at five o'clock in the morning, which means that her retiring came at 9:00 on the evening before the wedding. But even if Juliet went to her room that early (after IV.ii.37), it is safe to assume that she put off taking the potion as long as possible.

The most satisfactory reading, and the emendation here proposed, is “two and twenty hours”. If Juliet went to bed some time between midnight and three o'clock, she would have awakened between ten o'clock Wednesday night and one o'clock Thursday morning. This puts the hour at which Friar John returns Friar Laurence's letter between seven o'clock and ten o'clock Wednesday evening. The hours covered by the final scene (from late Wednesday night to Thursday dawn) are then of no greater extent than those covered by some of the other scenes (III.v; IV.v). This arrangement also makes plausible the shift in the last scene from emphasis on night to emphasis on morning; a later hour would suggest a scene set entirely in dawn, while an earlier hour would not give Romeo enough time to arrive from Mantua. Furthermore, Friar Laurence instructs Juliet to take the potion at night (IV.i.91) and implies also that its effect will wear off at night (IV.i.116); she does take it at night and, as she does so, imagines herself waking at night (IV.iii.37, 44)—incidentally making a long-time reference to “this many hundred years” (40) that the vault has held her family's bones. Thus it is definitely night when Juliet awakes, not evening or dawn, and a period of twenty-two hours fits the time scheme best, as long as we are going to keep the “two” and alter only one word. It is quite arguable, however, that the reading should be “four and twenty hours”, since a day is a more usual period of reference for drugs and medicine, since the time would fit even better, and since it would have been an understandable lapse for the author (or printer) to switch the numbers in his mind (a sort of metathesis) and put down “two and forty” for “four and twenty”.²⁰

This consideration of the time element in Romeo and Juliet suggests three general conclusions about the play. First, although it is a commonplace to point out the freedom and lack of regard for consistency with which Elizabethan dramatists handled time, this explanation will not apply to every time problem in an Elizabethan play. The time problem in Othello is of a wholly different kind from the one in Romeo and Juliet; in fact, it is more characteristic of Elizabethan time problems.²¹ A statement by G. B. Harrison may stand as representative of the consensus of opinion on the time question: “Shakespeare … was concerned with creating a succession of impressions in the minds of his audience, and not with presenting a series of mathematical problems of time. Months and even years pass unnoticed and unmentioned during the action of many Elizabethan plays. … These … inconsistencies are quite unimportant on the stage. Indeed, the actual passing of time in drama is seldom noticed …” (pp. 1643-1644). No attempt has been made here in connection with Romeo and Juliet to solve such questions as how the Nurse can have praised Romeo “So many thousand times” (III.v.239) in the short period since Juliet met him or how Friar Laurence knows when Juliet took the potion. These matters are indeed similar to the time problems of Othello and are covered by Harrison's comment. But Romeo and Juliet in the main follows a different system. It is full of specific time references which form a coherent scheme of events. Its emphasis on time is not casual but precise and helps establish some of the important ideas of the play—the control by fate, the lyrical contrast of light and darkness, the ruin by impetuous haste.

On top of this, the double time scheme accomplishes more than it is usually credited with doing. In Romeo and Juliet references to long periods of time do not serve to make the time seem less brief or the action more credible. The older characters' references to long periods of time are equal in precision to the young characters' references to short periods; long-time and short-time are both given a great deal of attention, and the contrast of the two suggests what the play is about—youth and age.²² Granville-Barker calls the time contradictions careless but also concedes that they represent “a sort of instinctive artistry”; yet his explanation of the double-time is that “this suggestion of the casual slackness of normal life conveniently loosens the tension of the tragedy a little” (II, 303). Just as there is nothing casual about the time in Romeo and Juliet, so would it be more accurate to say that the leisureliness of the time of the older generation forms a background which makes the tragedy of haste even more tense by contrast. The older generation is part of the tragedy, too, however, since it becomes ineffective and doomed to failure when forced to act with the speed of youth.

Finally, the numerous conversations in Romeo and Juliet in which characters struggle with time questions hint at a concern with the mystery of time that seems peculiarly modern. Time holds a powerful sway over all the characters, as they partially realize in their attempts to ascertain where they stand at any particular moment in relation to past, present, and future. It is important for a person to remember how long it has been since he last masked for a party—otherwise he will be lost in time. The relativity of time, expressed in so many metaphors in the play, is not the least of time's mysteries. That one living in the century of Bergson and Proust should find this in Romeo and Juliet is not surprising. Nor is it surprising that Shakespeare yields up to us what we look for in him and need to find.

Notes

1. “Time-Analysis of the Plots of Shakspere's Plays”, New Shakspere Society's Transactions, 1877-1879, p. 194. Daniel considers the time of the play to be “six consecutive days”, but, since he points out that it ends on the sixth morning, he is really saying that it covers five full days.

2. The London Shakespeare (New York, 1957), V, 120.

3. Shakespeare's Imagery and What It Tells Us (Cambridge, 1935), p. 312. Perhaps her view is the same as Munro's, if by Thursday night she means after midnight, or early Friday morning.

4. Shakespeare: The Complete Works (New York, 1952), p. 471. Five days is conventionally given as the time of the play—see also, for example, the edition of William Allan Neilson and Charles Jarvis Hill (Cambridge, 1942), p. 975.

5. “Double Time in ‘Romeo and Juliet’”, MLR [Modern Language Review], XLIV (1949), 372.

6. Harley Granville-Barker, Prefaces to Shakespeare (Princeton, 1947), II, 302.

7. William Watkiss Lloyd, Essays on the Life and Plays of Shakespeare (London, 1858), sig. LL5^v (reprinted from the S. W. Singer edition of 1856).

8. Unity in Shakespearian Tragedy (New York, 1956), pp. 10-25.

9. Chapman, p. 374. Stirling agrees with Chapman on this point (p. 10). For further examples of the longer time scheme, see Chapman's note, pp. 372-374. He uses “longer time” to mean suggestions that the action has covered a longer period of time; I am using it to mean direct references to long periods of time (which are not necessarily—and usually are not—involved in the timing of the action itself).

10. All line references are to the G. B. Harrison edition, which follows the Globe text. I discuss the play by scenes for convenience of reference, not because the scene divisions are integral to the time scheme—since obviously they bear little relation to it. The effect of speed would be enhanced by a continuous performance of the play, as suggested by Granville-Barker (II, 323-327). The days are accounted for so completely that it would seem reasonable to have no intermissions between days; indeed, since we have evening, night, and dawn scenes, the impression of a realistic continuity of action would be heightened.

11. The time of year of the play cannot be stated with assurance, since the “fortnight and odd days” is more vague than most time references in the play. The holiday for apothecaries (V.i.56) offers no clue because the Lammastide reference is not definite enough to base other chronology upon and because Shakespeare gives the apothecary a holiday only in order to keep the inner stage free for the next scene, according to Ralph Waterbury Condee, “The Apothecary's Holiday”, SQ [Shakespeare Quarterly], III (1952), 282. Furthermore, there have been objections to placing the play in the middle of July (two weeks before Lammas), since Capulet has a fire in his house (I.v.30) and Juliet thinks she hears a nightingale, which would not be singing that late in the season (III.v.2-5)—see John Fitchett Marsh, “Shakespeariana”, N&Q [Notes and Queries], LVI (1877), 422. These are not strong objections, however, since it is possible for one to have a fire at any time of year and since Juliet's comment about the nightingale is wishful thinking more than anything else, for she does not want dawn to come. The Lammas reference does not contradict any other clear reference, and the “hot days” (III.i.2-4) would seem to support it.

12. Charles Knight, in Studies of Shakespeare … (London, 1851), p. 216, considers the Nurse's speech contradictory since the Nurse says that Juliet is fourteen but that she was weaned and could stand alone only at the time of the earthquake eleven years before (or not until she was three). Knight explains the contradiction by saying that Shakespeare, “in defiance of a very obvious calculation on the part of the Nurse”, was making direct reference to the earthquake of 6 April 1580 (and thus that he wrote in 1591). But J. P. Collier, in his edition (London, 1842), also points out the inconsistencies in this speech and comes to the opposite conclusion—that they “render it impossible to arrive at any definite conclusion” about the date of the play (VI, 370; quoted by H. H. Furness in the Variorum Romeo and Juliet [Philadelphia, 1871], p. 44). However, would not a more plausible explanation than Knight's be that the discrepancy is not an oversight on Shakespeare's part, since each number appears twice, but a device for illustrating the unreliability of the Nurse's memory and her generally rattle-brained disposition? In any case, these numbers have their effect in contributing to the long-time scheme.

13. See Eric Partridge, Shakespeare's Bawdy (London, 1955), p. 100, s. v. “den.”

14. Capulet's greeting, “God ye godden” (173), causes some difficulty here, since Mercutio's correction of the Nurse in II. iv. 116 establishes “good-den” as an afternoon salutation. However, it is perhaps consistent with the progressive speeding up of the action (Sunday and Monday are covered much more fully than Tuesday and Wednesday) that we pass from early morning to afternoon in a hundred lines. On the other hand, one might say that Capulet's use of this expression in the morning is a reflection of his angry mood; it is a rude way of asking the Nurse to leave and of implying that he does not wish to see her again that day.

15. Cf. Chapman, p. 374. Chapman, however, feels there is an inconsistency here, since, according to him, it took Balthasar overnight to go the other direction—from Verona to Mantua. But how is it possible for Balthasar to take this long, even in Chapman's own scheme, since he agrees that Juliet's “funeral” is Wednesday and her suicide Thursday morning? We must conclude that Balthasar makes the round trip after the funeral on Wednesday. Marsh (p. 422) uses Friar Laurence's assumption (in V.ii) that Friar John has made a round trip to prove the shortness of the distance. Since the day of these final events is the point we are trying to establish, is it not a circular argument to say that, because Friar John has not had much time for this trip, the distance is short, and therefore the trip takes only a brief time? The present argument bases the time schedule on other evidence, and we can use Friar Laurence's assumption of a round trip as further indication (in addition to Romeo's return) that the distance is short. At the most, Friar John has twenty-four hours for the trip, if Friar Laurence sent him immediately after seeing Juliet on Tuesday afternoon (IV.i.123). If, on the other hand, Friar Laurence waited until he (somehow) learned of the change in wedding plans, Friar John would have had a considerably shorter time.

16. We can alternatively use this line as evidence that the trip from Mantua to Verona takes less than a day. But we cannot have it both ways—if we use the line to prove that the scene occurs in the afternoon, we are assuming as given that the trip between the towns takes only a few hours, and we are arguing in a circle if we then turn around and say that, since Romeo starts in the afternoon and arrives at night, the trip therefore can be made in several hours.

17. The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. Richard Grant White (Boston and New York, 1883), V, 300 n. See also Daniel, p. 193.

18. Some critics place the opening of Act V on the day after the funeral in an attempt to make the time references consistent (although, even with that extra day, the forty-two hours will not fit properly). Thus P. A. Daniel (p. 194) assigns IV. v to Wednesday and V to Thursday and (at the end) Friday. In the Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke edition (London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, n.d.), III, 202 n., the “two days buried” (V.iii.176) is annotated, “The time is here made to tally [with the forty-two hours].” Their phraseology, however, suggests that the consistency is somewhat forced (as it is, in this system, with the necessity of skipping a twenty-four hour period).

19. William Maginn, Shakespeare Papers, ed. Shelton MacKenzie (New York, 1856), pp. 78-79 n. Maginn's statement is quoted, somewhat condensed, in the Variorum Romeo and Juliet, p. 428 n.

20. The principal objection to emending this line is that the quartos and the folio all agree in the reading “two and forty”. The authority of this reading is further strengthened by the fact that Q2 is commonly thought to be based on Shakespeare's own manuscript. If Shakespeare did write “two and forty”, the discrepancy in time may have arisen through a revision of some original time scheme and a failure to correct all the time references to correspond with it. But the point here is that, despite the authority of the traditional reading, the inconsistency it creates is so foreign to the method of the play (with its accurate and precise time references) that the line should nevertheless be emended.

21. But the two are sometimes compared (as in Chapman, p. 372). In Othello the question is one of reconciling two time schemes that apply to the present action; in Romeo and Juliet the long-time consists of references to the past by the older characters, and the forty-two hours is an inconsistency within the short-time scheme of the present. A recent discussion supporting the consistency of time references in Othello is Ernest Bloomfield Zeisler, Othello: Time Enigma and Color Problem (Chicago, 1954). Zeisler, paradoxically, considers the problem “irrelevant” (p. iii)—which, however, one cannot do in the case of Romeo and Juliet.

22. Hardin Craig, in An Interpretation of Shakespeare (New York, 1948), pp. 41-46, discusses Romeo and Juliet in terms of “the succession of generations” which gives the play its “broadest significance”.