Friar Laurence's cell — the banishment

Friar Laurence's cell. Romeo, hiding there since fleeing the public square, hears the Friar return with the news. Banishment, not death. Romeo's response is one of the play's most theatrical refusals of consolation: banishment is worse than death. Death is a single sharp instant; banishment puts a wall between him and Juliet that mortality cannot cross. "Heaven is here, / where Juliet lives." Every cat and dog and little mouse, he says, has more grace than he. The Friar tries philosophy. Romeo will have none of it. "Hang up philosophy. / Unless philosophy can make a Juliet, / displant a town, reverse a prince's doom, / it helps not."

The Nurse arrives — sent by Juliet, with the news that her lady is "weeping and blubbering" in her chamber. Romeo asks where she is, whether she calls him a murderer. Then he draws his dagger and stabs at himself. The Friar tears it from his hand. The next twenty lines are the Friar's only sustained anger in the play. "Art thou a man? Thy form cries out thou art... / Hast thou slain Tybalt? Wilt thou slay thyself?" Tybalt would have killed Romeo and Romeo killed him; the law, instead of executing him, banished him; Juliet is alive and waiting. He shakes the boy back into himself.

Then the plan. Romeo will go to Juliet tonight as arranged — by the rope ladder, through her window — and they will spend the night together. Before dawn he will ride for Mantua and live there in concealment, with the Friar's man as courier, until the marriage can be published and the Prince's pardon won. The Nurse takes the ring back to Juliet. Romeo, steadied, follows into the night. The audience now has the play's central piece of plumbing: a marriage that depends on a friar's letter reaching Mantua.