SOURCE: Tanselle, G. Thomas. “Time in Romeo and Juliet.” Shakespeare Quarterly 15, no. 4 (autumn 1964): 349-61.

In the following essay, Tanselle focuses on Romeo and Juliet's references to time in relation to its themes of fate, youth versus age, and haste.

It is conventional for editors and critics to point out that in Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare compressed into a matter of days the action that took nine months in Brooke's Romeus and Juliet. They also note that there are a great many time references in the play, and, on the basis of these refererences, they construct a calendar for the events of the plot. But, even though allusions to time are made with great precision in the play, critics are not yet agreed about such a seemingly elementary chronological point as the number of days the plot covers. P. A. Daniel, for example, declared in 1878 that the play...