Give me, give me! a solution! (4.1.121-126)

JULIET                        Give me, give me! O tell not me of fear.

FRIAR              Hold, get you gone, be strong and prosperous

                        In this resolve; I’ll send a friar with speed

                        To Mantua, with my letters to thy lord.

JULIET                        Love give me strength, and strength shall help afford.

                        Farewell, dear father.                       Exeunt.            (4.1.121-126)

Probably not quite as grabby as it looks on the page, but Juliet’s got her momentum and her energy back (those monosyllables), seizing on the Friar’s plan – and, at some point in this exchange, the potion – with complete trust and enthusiasm. She doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t say, have we thought this through properly – it’s exactly as she was with Romeo when they declared their love: this is what has to be, I’ve made my mind up, let’s get on with it. (Not that there’s any alternative.) To be fair, O tell not me of fear could be the beginning of something more extended, but the Friar interrupts, hold here meaning, don’t say anything more, time is short, you need to get home and start work on the necessary set-up for this plan. Again, a reminder of the plot and its vulnerabilities – the need to send word to Mantua (and, critically, relying on another agent who presumably cannot be told of the specific urgency of the mission) – although hindsight is a wonderful/terrible thing, and at this stage the wedding is some 36 hours away… Love give me strength, says Juliet, and that strength, that love, will enable her to do this frightening thing. Farewell, dear father (no longer the holy father, or the formal Friar of the scene’s beginning, when she was trying to remain in control and being polite and guarded and increasingly spiky) but again the affectionate, grateful Juliet. We might imagine he exits slowly, to his inner cell, daunted by what he has just arranged to do; Juliet exits, surely, at a run, every step, every act, taking her closer to reunion with Romeo. And look, here’s a couplet, a shared one at that (lord/afford); perhaps everything will turn out for the best.

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