JULIET                        O Fortune, Fortune, all men call thee fickle;

                        If thou art fickle, what dost thou with him

                        That is renowned for faith? Be fickle, Fortune:

                        For then I hope thou wilt not keep him long,

                        But send him back.               (3.5.60-64)

This is Juliet trying to get a grip on herself, to impose some kind of order and a framework of understanding. This is just bad luck, chance, Fortune, and Fortune is notoriously fickle, and Romeo is loyal and faithful – so Fortune won’t want him, and in any case she’s so fickle that she won’t keep him long. It’ll be OK, it will. But the repeated invocation of Fortune also ties this moment to a web of other moments and references in the play to fortune, fate, luck, the stars. Juliet’s own admission, a moment earlier, of her ill-divining soul. The Friar encouraging Romeo to be positive, to count his blessings, because Happiness courts thee in her best array and it’s all going to be fine. Romeo describing himself, in that great shout of despair following his impulsive killing of Tybalt, as fortune’s fool! His sense, before even meeting Juliet, that some consequence yet hanging in the stars shall bitterly begin his fearful date with this night’s revels. And, in the Prologue, the fatal loins, the star-crossed lovers. But the terms of that invocation – be fickle, Fortune – are also a kind of curse, for of course the nature and terms of Fortune’s fickleness are themselves fickle. What Juliet needs to do at this moment is have the ugliest of ugly cries: send him back, she howls, now looking so alone at the window, on the balcony. But she can’t, because things are about to get much, much worse.