JULIET                                    God pardon him, I do with all my heart:

                                    And yet no man like he doth grieve my heart.

LADY CAPULET         That is because the traitor murderer lives.

JULIET                                    Ay, madam, from the reach of these my hands.

                                    Would none but I might venge my cousin’s death! (3.5.82-86)

Juliet, and the audience, have again been reminded here that Romeo has killed a man. He may not be a villain, he may be gentle in all possible respects – but he is still Tybalt’s murderer. Juliet takes a conventionally pious position – God pardon him– but it’s more heartfelt than her mother could ever imagine; she has wrestled earlier with the proper moral and spiritual implications of what Romeo has done, and has at least started to make her peace with it: she has pardoned him, and accepted that he had no choice. Of course, her forgiveness is not disinterested, but she has thought it through in her long, anguished scene with the Nurse, and her prayer, God pardon him, is not simply a matter of form; she cares deeply about the state of Romeo’s soul, as well as his safety. Repetition is again important, here the double rhyme on heart – o my heart – and Juliet is seizing the opportunity, any opportunity, to speak from the heart: no man like he doth grieve my heart, and he is now ever further from the reach of these my hands. (Again the imagining and the memory of touch is central to the way in which she thinks of Romeo and their relationship.) Then the beginnings of a strange fantasy of revenge, partly to play along with her mother, but also perhaps because it’s a way of expressing the excessive, violent, passionate emotions that she’s trying to keep under control. Perhaps this is also one of the moments, unexpectedly, to which the play’s interest in oxymoron (and in bodies) has been leading: here’s much to do with hate, but more with love; here’s love disguised as hate, a desire for physical closeness, touch, intimacy disguised as the desire for violent revenge. And one of the things that this part of the scene is doing is establishing just how clever Juliet is, how desperate, and the lengths to which she is prepared to go. It’s slippery, jittery, dangerous, tense, not least for the audience – will Lady Capulet guess that something (else) is up? Will Juliet give herself away? And when will Lady Capulet get on to the matter of marrying Paris?