ROMEO           Farewell, farewell! one kiss, and I’ll descend.

                        [He goeth down.]

JULIET                        Art thou gone so, love, lord, ay husband, friend?

                        I must hear from thee every day in the hour,

                        For in a minute there are many days.

                        O, by this count I shall be much in years

                        Ere I again behold my Romeo!

ROMEO           [From below] Farewell!

                        I will omit no opportunity

                        That may convey my greetings, love, to thee. (3.5.42-50)

In some ways, this is like a terrible parody of the sonnet in 1.5, a shared couplet that is divided by a kiss rather than concluded and united. The forward momentum of the descend/ friend couplet – at least on the page – crowds out the kiss (just one kiss; in the version of the lovers’ parting in Troilus and Cressida, Troilus will describe them as scanted with a single famished kiss, a wonderful way of putting it); there will never be enough time, even though, in performance, there’s obviously a pause, not only for the final embrace but also for Romeo to begin his climb down from the balcony. Are you gone, just like that, Juliet asks, is this really happening? and it’s as if she tries to tie him to her just a little longer with that list of titles she gives him – love, lord, husband, friend – going back to the balcony scene when she has meditated and improvised so gleefully on his name: he is her love and her lord, her husband and her friend, her lover (and the prominence of husband, because only she can address him as such, and because that is their bond now). Above all he is her Romeo: Call me but love and I’ll be new baptised, he promised in the balcony scene, and his name has indeed been renewed; he is now Juliet’s Romeo, love, lord, husband, friend. Whereas the scene began with the lovers stretching time through poetry, ecstatically holding back the dawn, Juliet now imagines the future as one in which time will drag: minutes, let alone hours, will seem like many days; she imagines that she will be years older by the time she sees him again. (A poignant echo of her earlier longing for night: So tedious is this day as is the night before some festival to an impatient child that hath new robes and may not wear them. Now Juliet imagines future time dragging even more because the time of her reunion with Romeo is uncertain. In this moment she sounds so young.) And of course she wants to hear from him as often as possible, and he promises, of course, that he’ll send word to her as often as he can. Romeo is scared – his life is in danger in this moment but Juliet’s is not – but he is also, perhaps, being the grown up in the situation, taking the lead; he’s the one saying Farewell, Farewell, Farewell. It’s a bleak version of the end of the balcony scene, when parting was such sweet sorrow; it is already the morrow, and time to say, not good night, but Farewell.

I can’t quite believe this is happening either. It’s too soon.