A street — Mercutio, the Nurse, and the message

A street in Verona, late morning. Mercutio and Benvolio have not seen Romeo since last night and are discussing the only news in town. Tybalt has sent Romeo a letter at the Montague house, certainly a challenge to a duel. Mercutio mocks Tybalt — "the very butcher of a silk button," a fencer who fights by the book — and worries that Romeo, as he is, is in no state to face him. Romeo arrives transformed. The change is so visible that Mercutio greets it with relief: "now art thou sociable, now art thou Romeo." They run through a long sequence of elaborate puns on bones, fish, and flowers; Mercutio is at his most himself.

The Nurse arrives in her best clothes, with her servingman Peter trailing behind carrying her fan. She asks for "young Romeo." Mercutio greets her with elaborate mock-courtesy and a sequence of bawdy jokes that go on long past comfort. The Nurse holds her own; she eventually demands Romeo speak privately. Mercutio and Benvolio stroll off, leaving Peter to guard her honor.

Romeo gives her the message Juliet is waiting for. This afternoon, between two and three, Juliet is to come to Friar Laurence's cell on whatever pretence she can find — confession will do — and there she will be shrived and married. He hands the Nurse a coin; she protests, then takes it. He tells her also to wait, in an hour, behind the abbey wall, where Balthasar will meet her with a rope ladder; that ladder, tonight, will lead to "the high topgallant of my joy" — Juliet's window. The Nurse, fond and complicit and a little out of her depth, hurries off home. The wedding is on.