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Today when I distributed cake and snacks, I said by way of explanation, 'It's Juliet's birthday.' A birthday would be enough reason to celebrate - except for the fact that Juliet was the Juliet of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (1594).
The sad fact is that the play has become so much of a cliche that the original impulses of the lovers - and the brilliance of Shakespeare's verse - are often forgotten. Re-reading the play, in the context in which Shakespeare wrote it, yields new flashes of insight.
As I scoured the play for its hidden meanings, the word 'Lammas-tide' caught my attention. The term nestles in the conversation about Juliet's age between Lady Capulet and Juliet's nurse in the opening of Act I, Scene 3:
LADY CAPULET: Thou know'st my daughter's of a pretty age.
NURSE: Faith, I can tell her age unto and hour.
LADY CAPULET: She's not fourteen.
NURSE: I'll lay fourteen of my teeth, ---
And yet, to my teeth be it spoken, I have but four ----
She is not fourteen. How long is it now to Lammas-tide?
LADY CAPULET: A fortnight and odd days.
NURSE: Even or odd, of all days in the year,
Come Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen.
. . . . as I said,
On Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen;
That shall she, marry; I remember it well.
Lammastide in England is celebrated on 1 August with freshly-baked bread of the first grain harvest of the year. The festival celebrated youth, ripening grain, and fertility - metaphors for Juliet's coming of age. The word appears to have Celtic and pre-Christian origins.
Lammas Tide is a 5-member psychedelic folk rock band from Perth, Western Australia. Listen to 'children frolicking in a pastoral dream' here: https://thelammastide.bandcamp.com/track/fothersby
The day Juliet was born, is arrived at by its proximity to a harvest festival. Not a birth certificate. Now, on 31 July, it is 'Lammas-eve at night.' Happy birthday Juliet.
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Pic of Lammastide from British postage stamp issued in 1981, courtesy 'Book of Days,' conviviobookworks.com Text source: opensourceshakespeare(dot)org Emphasis mine. Konnsanchem fest - the festival of sheaves - is celebrated on 5th August every year in Raia. Updated 1 August 2020.
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