ROMEO           Good morrow, father.

FRIAR                                                  Benedicite!

                        What early tongue so sweet saluteth me?

                        Young son, it argues a distempered head

                        So soon to bid good morrow to thy bed:

                        Care keeps his watch in every old man’s eye,

                        And where care lodges, sleep will never lie;

                        But where unbruisèd youth with unstuffed brain

                        Doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign. (2.3.31-38)

A formal exchange of greetings; the Friar’s Benedicite! means bless you, but it might also be recognisable to an early modern audience as the title of one the canticles chanted or sung in the service of Matins or Morning Prayer; appropriately for what the Friar has just been saying, it’s a song of praise, largely about the natural world: ‘O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord’. The Friar can’t resist the opportunity to teach (or moralise): being up so early is a sign of distemperature, sickness (or, by extension, not being temperate, being rash: this is prescient on the Friar’s part). The Friar knows teenagers well: they are impossible to get out of bed and they sleep soundly because they don’t have anything on their mind, unlike old men, who lie awake worrying. Actually, as we know from Romeo’s parents and Benvolio, Romeo has been having trouble sleeping, but the Friar’s speaking in generalities to make his point. The idea of Romeo as an unbruisèd youth is vivid and poignant, especially in conjunction with golden sleep: Romeo and the other young people in the play are so shiny and full of potential; they are – comparatively – so untouched by the world, albeit damaged by their families’ feud.