Watchman (The True and Most Excellent Comedie of Romeo and Juliet)

A watchman was a character in William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet.

In Act V Scene III, he arrived in the Capulet tomb with Friar Laurence as his prisoner soon after the Chief Watchman had discovered the corpses of Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet. The watchman presented Laurence to his superior as " a friar that trembles, sighs and weeps" before explaining to him that he and other members of the watch had taken a mattock and a spade from him as he came across the churchyard. The Chief proclaimed this was "a great suspicion" and ordered his subordinate to keep the Friar close by. In an alternative version of the play conceived to "make dark tragedie light", the watchman appeared for a final time following this exchange. After Romeo and Juliet's fathers, Capulet and Montague respectively, had witnessed the scene of death and quickly healed the rift between their feuding families, he brought the Friar forward on the Chief's orders, who demanded that he explain his role in the affair. Laurence complied, disclosing that Romeo and Juliet had been secretly married. (PROSE: The True and Most Excellent Comedie of Romeo and Juliet)