"Two households, both alike in dignity," he says, with the confidence of a man who’s never run a census.

We are given no confidence interval, no error bars, not even a passing nod to the broader Veronese housing market. Two? Why not three? Why not seven?

Dignity, too, goes unmeasured. Are we talking patrician gravitas or the brittle self-importance of guys who name their swords? The line presumes a convenient symmetry where there is almost certainly chaos, over-leveraged family fortunes, and at least one uncle squatting in a basilica basement.

Frankly, I suspect "two households" is just the number Shakespeare could hold in his head without dropping his drink.