What does bescreen'd in night mean?

Answer 1

From Romeo and Juliet, Act II Scene 2, the balcony scene. Juliet cannot see Romeo; she says he is "bescreen'd in night." "Bescreen'd" is the same word as "bescreened"; the apostrophe tells us that the word is to be pronounced in two syllables not in three, "be-screend" not "be-screen-ned". You know what it means to screen something, don't you? You put something in front of it so it can't be seen. You do the screening and it gets screened. Or you can use the prefix "be" which means the same thing. If you deck something with flowers, the thing covered in flowers is "bedecked". So here is Romeo, who is hidden behind, or screened by, the night or in other words, he is bescreened by the night.