JULIET                                    Madam, if you could find out but a man

                                    To bear a poison, I would temper it,

                                    That Romeo should upon receipt thereof

                                    Soon sleep in quiet. O how my heart abhors

                                    To hear him named and cannot come to him,

                                    To wreak the love I bore my cousin

                                    Upon his body that hath slaughtered him!

LADY CAPULET         Find thou the means, and I’ll find such a man. (3.5.96-103)

Dangerous games, as Juliet, in essence, tells the truth. My heart abhors to hear him named and cannot come to him – and to hear him named, let alone with such casual, dismissive venom, by anyone else, at all. So she names Romeo twice in five lines, as if she can’t help herself, and she continues to speak double, offering to temper the poison (not mix it, but dilute it, so that Romeo will simply sleep, not die) and to wreak love upon his body, throw herself on him with passionate, violent love, not hatred. Wreak is a wonderfully vivid, active verb: it means revenge, specifically to punish, inflict pain – but here that intensity is transferred to love (and not for Tybalt, but for Romeo himself, obviously). The idea of a sleeping potion is also foreshadowing what Juliet herself will do, but there’s a fleeting poignancy to her imagining both Romeo’s body – his body– and Romeo sleeping in quiet, picturing him (did they even sleep last night? unlikely) – again an evocation of a happy future time, when there will be time for both physical passion and quiet sleep. But Lady Capulet – thank goodness – is blinded by her own desire for vengeance, and treats this all in a matter of fact way: good, we have a plan. (Does she not notice that this is a very different Juliet to the compliant, polite girl of only a few days ago? She’s about to get a considerable shock.)