FRIAR              Each part, deprived of supple government,

                        Shall stiff and stark and cold appear like death,

                        And in this borrowed likeness of shrunk death

                        Thou shalt continue two and forty hours,

                        And then awake as from a pleasant sleep.

                        Now when the bridegroom in the morning comes

                        To rouse thee from thy bed, there art thou dead.

                        Then as the manner of our country is,

                        In thy best robes, uncovered on the bier,

                        Thou shalt be borne to that same ancient vault

                        Where all the kindred of the Capulets lie. (4.1.102-112)

And so the Friar concludes his cheerful (not) description of the effects of the potion, so evocative and disturbing in its sensuality. Whereas his earlier account of the fading of the roses of Juliet’s cheeks to wanny ashes has retained a residual, ghostly softness (reinforced by breath and warmth), now he describes something that has almost ceased to be a body at all: stiff and stark and cold. And utterly still – deprived of supple government – Juliet, who has been so quick, so tactile, so sensitive. Another moment of plot-precision – two and forty hours– which is actually a bit of a problem for the time-scheme, although we don’t know it yet. (In the current scenario with wedding on Thursday, potion on Wednesday night, this would mean Juliet waking up some time on Friday afternoon.) Here, the detail mostly suggests that the Friar knows what he’s talking about, that he’s on top of things (how? has he tested this? if so, on whom?!) and the as from a pleasant sleep is there to reassure Juliet. And the point of all this? so that everyone will think she’s dead, she won’t have to marry Paris (hooray!) and they will more or less immediately take her to the Capulet tomb and leave her alone. (This is, of course, exactly what she has just said she fears most.) Some additional points essential for the plot but also reassuring for the audience: she will be uncovered on the bier, and in her best robes – not naked in a shroud, or sealed in a coffin. Many, if not most people in early modern England were buried without coffins, although the social elite (of which Juliet is clearly one) would likely be buried in a coffin even if that coffin were then placed within a family vault, rather than buried. (Such a coffin might include a lead lining, and be soldered shut as well as nailed.) And further reassurance – that Juliet’s going to be beautifully dressed, dressed – we can infer – as if for her wedding. The bridegroom coming to rouse her from her bed will be futile, but she will nevertheless be buried in all her wedding finery. The bed easily becomes the bier, and death the bridegroom, in an erotically charged conceit that will return.