Romeo & Juliet: The Value of Time

Before Romeo met Juliet he was in a typical courtly love stage with his love for Rosaline not particularly strong. During courtly love time typically goes quickly which he shows when he said “Is the day so young…sad hours seem long” which is typical of the whole idea of courtly love. This changes when he finds Juliet and his excitement makes the time go by so slowly.

Later on in the story there are countless times where Romeo and Juliet say goodnight shown when Juliet said “a thousand times good night” this shows that they keep coming back to each other. Their love is impatient in the way that they cannot wait till tomorrow to see each other again. Six hours to their parents is “twenty year” to them as their excitement to see each other again takes over. So may things happen in such a short time which leads them to believe time is going so slowly which leads them to having too much time in their hands which later drives them to fatality.

Romeo and Juliet’s parents however have a lot of time in their hands which they use at will. Lady Capulet speaks as if there is loads of time to use when talking to the nurse, as the nurse says “how long till Lammas tide?”, lady Capulet replies “a fortnight and odd days” talking like the hours and days are of no importance to her. With Romeo and Juliet they cannot wait from about midnight till “the hour of nine” to see each other and their love takes over their life and destroys their routine of life. Time is precious for Romeo and Juliet whereas for their parents it is at their disposal.

At the Capulet party there is an example of Juliet’s father losing track of time saying “some five and twenty years, and then we masked” but actually it was “more” which shows that their parents were not bothered about looking after their time.

So time in Romeo and Juliet’s world is valued a lot more than the time their parents have as they know that their time together will not be forever as eventually they will be found out by their parents.