JULIET                                                            Come, civil Night,

                        Thou sober-suited matron all in black,

                        And learn me how to lose a winning match,

                        Played for a pair of stainless maidenhoods.

                        Hood my unmanned blood, bating in my cheeks,

                        With thy black mantle, till strange love grow bold,

                        Think true love acted simple modesty. (3.2.10-16)

The units of thought have gradually lengthened as the speech has developed: 4 lines, 5.5 lines, and now 6.5 lines, albeit divided between two sentences. Night is definitely personified here, as a respectable, serious, older married woman dressed in black. We might imagine a version of the Nurse, even, to whom Juliet would turn for advice and comfort, wearing a black mantle, an all-enveloping cloak, which here will not simply conceal the lovers from the world, but specifically hide the maiden blush that Juliet has previously invoked. And the birds are back: here Juliet imagines the blood that rushes to her cheeks (and by extension herself) as an untrained hawk, fluttering, soft, a little wild, in need of both reassurance and restraint. Every time I read this I’m taken aback by the frankness and candour, the mixture of apprehensiveness and profound certainty: this is what will, what must be. Juliet owns both her desire and her fear, and seems to imagine Romeo as sharing both emotions; at any rate, she is certain that what they are anticipating will be new and strange to them both: they are both inexperienced, both stainless. Together they have everything to lose, but more than everything to gain, because they have already won each other. The language here is once again about mutuality and balance, with the match of marriage displacing any thought of competition. And after the gorgeous conceit of the blush as hawk, there’s frank, steadfast simplicity: in the dark we’ll get used to each other, those bodies we’ve imagined and just started to get to know, and to this strange, unfamiliar love, and Night needn’t worry that there is anything untoward, because we, and the love we share, are true and pure; everything that we do together is true and pure too. This is so right, she says, and I am so sure. (I am *so* not doing this justice…)