Capulet's garden — the balcony scene

Romeo, alone in the Capulet orchard, sees a light kindle in an upper window. Juliet steps out onto her balcony, leaning her cheek upon her hand, thinking herself unobserved. "O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?" The line is not "where art thou" but "why art thou": why, of all the names available, did the boy who stopped her heart have to be a Montague? She would give up her family name to be his; let him give up his. "What's in a name? That which we call a rose / by any other name would smell as sweet."

Romeo, who has heard her, speaks. She startles, then recognizes his voice. She begins to ask the practical questions the play keeps insisting on through her. How did he get over the orchard walls? Whose servants saw him? Has he taken her too easily? Does he intend a fair marriage? She names the danger of what is happening: "I have no joy of this contract tonight; / it is too rash, too unadvis'd, too sudden, / too like the lightning, which doth cease to be / ere one can say, 'It lightens.'" She is the only character in the play who names this clearly.

She agrees anyway. The Nurse calls her in; she goes; she comes back to add one more thing; she goes again; she comes back. Three times she leaves and returns. They exchange vows. He swears by the moon, and she stops him — "O swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon" — and demands no witness but their own honour. Before they part she has set the time: at nine she will send the Nurse; he will say where they are to be married. Day breaks. "Parting is such sweet sorrow / that I shall say good night till it be morrow."