BENVOLIO      My noble uncle, do you know the cause?

MONTAGUE   I neither know it, nor can learn of him.

BENVOLIO      Have you importuned him by any means?

MONTAGUE   Both by myself and many other friends,

                        But he, his own affections’ counsellor,

                        Is to himself (I will not say how true)

                        But to himself so secret and so close,

                        So far from sounding and discovery,

                        As is the bud bit with an envious worm

                        Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air,

                        Or dedicate his beauty to the sun.

                        Could we but learn from whence his sorrows grow,

                        We would as willingly give cure as know. (1.1.134-146)

Benvolio probably knows what’s up with Romeo, but he’s establishing here that Montague doesn’t (the generational divide again) and also that, like Lady Montague, Romeo’s father is genuinely concerned; he wants to know what’s troubling his son, and he wants to help; he’s been trying to get him to talk both directly and indirectly, both by myself and many other friends. As in the previous passage, the invocation of counsel / a counsellor is striking: Friar Lawrence is the figure most readily associated with sharing confidences and asking for or giving advice in the play, but it’s notable how often the advice sought (from him and others, the Nurse for example) is unwelcome, ignored, or even bad. Romeo’s reluctance to confide in anyone, instead acting as his own affections’ counsellor, sets up the way in which Juliet will become the source of transformative good counsel that Montague hopes for, but the careful distinction that is made between so secret and so close and true is also important here: it will only be by falling in love with Juliet that Romeo becomes true to himself. The bud bit with the envious worm / Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air recalls the cankered hate of the Prince’s earlier condemnation of the feud – the feud itself is that worm – and the sweet leaves (that is, petals) will be echoed by later roses and, especially, by the bud of love that may prove a beauteous flower that Juliet imagines in the balcony scene. Characteristically, Montague ends his speech with a couplet, and, neatly, the rhyme cues RomeO. The O rhyme will recur.