PRINCE           Romeo slew him, he slew Mercutio;

                        Who now the price of his dear blood doth owe?

MONTAGUE   Not Romeo, Prince, he was Mercutio’s friend;

                        His fault concludes but what the law should end,

                        The life of Tybalt.

PRINCE                                               And for that offence

                        Immediately we do exile him hence. (3.1.173-178)

There is a moment here when it looks like the Prince might pardon Romeo outright. Maybe. He’s asking the crucial question – not doubting Benvolio’s version, not engaging with the details of Lady Capulet’s hysteria – but instead pondering what justice, proportionality might look like in this messy situation. (A reminder that the Prince is named Escalus or Escales, foregrounding balance and the scales of justice.) And he’s thinking mostly of Mercutio, his dear kinsman, and of how to honour him. Montague, I think, wrecks it in his understandable desperation to save his son. The Prince has already been told what to do by Lady Capulet, and now Montague’s having a go. The Prince clearly agrees, up to a point, but he has to make clear that he’s the one in charge – hence interrupting Montague on the half line, with the not-quite-fatal-but-might-as-well-be sentence: Immediately we do exile him hence. The back and forward rhythm of the stichomythia through this passage, the couplets, and its probable rapidity – the tone is urgent, desperate, shocked – gives this a terrible momentum. And then it stops. Exile. The Prince’s doom. Romeo doesn’t know yet, of course. And Juliet doesn’t know any of this. Desperate times.