CAPULET        What, is my daughter gone to Friar Lawrence?

NURSE            Ay, forsooth.

CAPULET        Well, he may chance to do some good on her.

                        A peevish self-willed harlotry it is.

                                    Enter JULIET.

NURSE            See where she comes from shrift with merry look.

CAPULET        How now, my headstrong, where have you been gadding?

JULIET                        Where I have learnt me to repent the sin

                        Of disobedient opposition

                        To you and your behests, and am enjoined

                        By holy Lawrence to fall prostrate here

                        To beg your pardon.

                                                            [She kneels down.]

                                                                        Pardon, I beseech you!

                        Henceforward I am ever ruled by you. (4.2.10-21)

The beginning of this exchange between the Nurse and Capulet also helps to compress the time scheme; this is the Nurse doing as Juliet instructed her, telling Capulet that she has gone to see Friar Lawrence. (There may be the suggestion that he knows already, that the Nurse told Lady Capulet and she told Capulet but this is the first time that the Nurse has been in Capulet’s presence since – which is all getting a bit novelistic and speculative and really doesn’t matter.) I think mostly it’s making a strong connection with the previous scene with the Capulets and the Nurse, suggesting that very little time has passed – in effect, that these scenes are taking place in real time. Has Capulet calmed down? Maybe. He does like a party, and he’s throwing himself into the organisation here; he has a quick temper but does seem to simmer down. There’s scope for him to speak even his insults – a peevish self-willed harlotry it is, my headstrong – with ironic affection (maybe) – and it is sometimes affectionate, used for a child. But, equally, he could still be bitterly angry and mean every nasty word.

A cue for Juliet – with merry look – once more she must perform, dissemble – and she gets the tone exactly right: formal, penitent, pious. It is a sin to disobey parents because it violates the sixth of the Ten Commandments, ‘Honour thy father and thy mother’, and Juliet is demonstrating that she knows this. (She is also making clear that Friar Lawrence is trustworthy, serious, and on the side of parents, who should be obeyed.) Henceforward I am ever ruled by you. But – and we might not notice it – at no point in this scene does she say, explicitly, that she will marry Paris. She says that she will do as her father decrees; she says that she is sorry that she was disobedient and defiant. But she says nothing that could be construed as an outright lie; she makes no false promises, she does not lie. Juliet, super-brave, super-cool, super-smart – but never compromising her integrity.