[4.2] Enter FatherCAPULET, Mother[LADY CAPULET], NURSE, andSERVINGMEN, two or three.

CAPULET                    So many guests invite as here are writ.

                                                                                    [Exit Servingman]

                                    Sirrah, go hire me twenty cunning cooks.

SERVINGMAN            You shall have none ill, sir, for I’ll try if they can lick their fingers.

CAPULET                    How can’st thou try them so?

SERVINGMAN            Marry, sir, ’tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers; therefore he that cannot lick his own fingers goes not with me.

CAPULET                    Go, be gone.

                                                                                    [Exit Servingman]

                                    We shall be much unfurnished for this time. (4.2.1-9)

Excellent, we’re back to the comic servingmen. Why? I’m not much of a fan of ‘comic relief’ as a concept – it doesn’t tell us much – so, what’s the point of putting this at the top of the scene? Bustle, at least partly, I think: the previous scene has ended with Juliet buoyed up with hope and nervous energy, racing to put the plan in action. And that energy, that sense of hurry and impatience and above all pressure of time has now been transferred to the Capulet household, with servingmen being sent on urgent errands; it keeps the momentum up, everyone a bit on edge and jittery, entrances and exits at high speed. The second servingman – who has the joke about cooks – might well be Peter, or even Gregory or Sampson (remember them?) from 1.1; if the latter, there would be a nice connection between biting thumbs and licking fingers. (Body parts, yet again.)

The more forceful echo, however, is of the scene with the illiterate servingman sent out with the guest-list that he could not read – was it only two days ago? – which alerted Romeo and Benvolio to the Capulet party and was, unwittingly, the catalyst for This Whole Thing. (There’s scope for the servingman, if it’s the same one, to take the list, open his mouth to protest, look resigned, and trudge off, seeking once more for the learned so that he can discover who to invite.) Capulet seems to have forgotten that he told Paris – and his wife  – that it was going to be a small wedding, some half a dozen friends. Twenty cooks, at this short notice? Lady Capulet’s mostly silent presence in the first part of this scene may speak eloquently about the state of the Capulets’ relationship – is she involved in the bustle, checking lists, giving orders, or looking furious, or resigned, or vacant, tranquilised?