BENVOLIO                              Romeo he cries aloud,

                        ‘Hold, friends! friends, part!’ and swifter than his tongue,

                        His agile arm beats down their fatal points,

                        And ’twixt them rushes; underneath whose arm

                        An envious thrust from Tybalt hit the life

                        Of stout Mercutio, and then Tybalt fled;

                        But by and by comes back to Romeo,

                        Who had but newly entertained revenge,

                        And to’t they go like lightning, for, ere I

                        Could draw to part them, was stout Tybalt slain;

                        And as he fell, did Romeo turn and fly.

                        This is the truth, or let Benvolio die. (3.1.155-166)

It’s another single sentence, or almost, again carefully setting out the salient details with clarity and truthfulness, colourless and mostly unqualified with adjectives and adverbs. He describes exactly what we just saw happen, and not least its speed: Romeo intervened physically even moreswiftlythan he intervened verbally, rushing bravely between Tybalt and Mercutio. And then the final fight was even faster: Tybalt came back almost immediately, by and by, and he and Romeo were fighting again, like lightning, Tybalt was dead even before Benvolio could draw his own sword and Romeo fled almost before Tybalt hit the ground. No wonder poor Benvolio can barely pause for breath. He continues to paint Romeo, accurately, as the peacemaker, and Tybalt as the aggressor, whose envious thrustis quite literally underhand, under Romeo’s armas he’s struggling to part the combatants or perhaps even to restrain Mercutio. And Romeo had no thought of revenge, of responding to Tybalt himself, until Mercutio’s death. Both Tybalt and Mercutio were stout, brave; both were, implicitly, equally to blame. But Romeo was blameless: he tried to stop it, he killed Tybalt in a moment of madness. And, bravely, Benvolio concludes with a final couplet: I’m telling the truth; put me to death if you don’t believe me. We wait, with bated breath.