Once again, the dawn divides Romeo and Juliet, this time, for good. As the sun's rays "lace the severing clouds," Juliet wishes the sound of the morning lark were actually the call of the nightingale. Juliet tries to deny the arrival of the coming day to prolong her time with Romeo. Their language is passionate and intense as Romeo agrees to stay and face his death. As in previous scenes, Romeo and Juliet's love flourishes in the dark, but daylight brings separation and ill fortune: Juliet says reluctantly, "window, let day in, and let life out."
As Romeo descends the balcony, Juliet experiences a frightening vision of Romeo "as one dead in the bottom of a tomb." This prophetic image will prove true in the final scene when Juliet awakens from her drug-induced slumber to find Romeo dead on the floor of the Capulet tomb. Once again, images of love and death intertwine, infecting the joy of their wedding night with the foreshadowing of their coming deaths.
Lady Capulet, unaware that Juliet grieves for Romeo's banishment rather than the death of Tybalt, tries to comfort her daughter with her plans to avenge Tybalt's death by poisoning Romeo. The speech is full of dramatic irony since Lady Capulet's hope of poisoning Romeo anticipates the method he chooses to take his own life in the final act of the play. Although Romeo drinks the poison by his own hand, it is the hatred, driven in part by Lady Capulet that gives him cause.
