The Nurse

Nurse, come back again

-Lady Capulet

• Lady Capulet is portrayed to be the epitome of traditional Elizabethan women.

• Her distant and indifferent connection with Juliet reflects the conventional parent-child dynamic of the Elizabethan period.

• In aristocratic circles, nurses often took on the maternal role of raising children because of this.

• Lady Capulet’s focus on arranging the most socially advantageous marriage for Juliet highlights her prioritisation of status and societal expectations above her own daughter’s personal happiness.

• This reinforces her complicity conformity to social conventions as she seeks to secure Juliet’s future purely through an advantageous marriage, yet she cannot do this without the nurse’s presence as she does not know her daughter well enough.

what lamb! what ladybird!

• Her first lines immediately portray her to be frivolous and melodramatic.

• The semantic field of animals connotes endearment while her exclamatory tone and language establish her to be excitable in her long ramblings.

• Her rambling is cut off by Lady Capulet, again reinforcing her talkative nature.

• She talks in prose which makes her speech sound more informal and colloquial, also contrasting the soliloquies and formal speeches given by other characters in the play.

• The Nurse’s portrayal could be interpreted as Shakespeare using her character as a symbol of the working class, making a parody of them.

thou wast the prettiest babe that i e’er nurse’d- 1.3

• The Nurse is introduced as a maternal surrogate figure for Juliet.

• Her tone is fond and she speaks retrospectively, reminding the audience of her role as Juliet’s primary carer throughout her childhood.

• She displays maternal love for her and knows her more intimately than Juliet’s own mother does, demonstrated by her rambling of tales from Juliet’s childhood.

• Her love for Juliet is further demonstrated by her overjoyed reaction to the idea of her marriage when it is mentioned by Lady Capulet.

by my maidenhead at twelve years old - 1.3

• Like Mercutio, the Nurse provides comic relief to the elements of tragedy in the play.

• The frequent use of colloquial language and bawdy sexual humour in her speech presents her as a humorous character.

• She is very talkative and often takes others’ words literally and interrupts herself, but her humour and language comes at her expense as they showcase her lower-class upbringing.

seek happy nights to happy days- 1.3

• The Nurse is one of the only characters who explicitly and genuinely wishes for Juliet’s happiness.

• This is further demonstrated when she acts as a go-between for Juliet and Romeo, having a crucial role in the arrangement of their secret marriage. She is working actively to support Juliet’s good fortune.

• In this way, she can be seen as being emotionally supportive, fulfilling the role of her surrogate mother, given Lady Capulet’s failure to fulfil this role.

The Nurse as a surrogate mother

• In the absence of a supportive maternal figure, the nurse fulfils this role for Juliet, acting as her surrogate mother as she gives her emotional support and guidance.

• Her maternal traits remind the audience of the qualities which Lady Capulet lacks, since she prioritises financial and social gains over her daughter’s happiness.

The Nurse as a symbol of the working class

• Since the nurse is the sole prominent character of the working class, she can thus be seen as Shakespeare’s representation of them.

• Her frivolous, melodramatic and comical qualities invite the audience to laugh at her, and by extension mock the working class as well. Her presentation as humorous also presents her to be the comic relief of the play alongside Mercutio.

• Her portrayal as the play’s comic relief is similar to the role of working class characters in Shakespeare’s other plays, thus suggesting to the audience how the working class in the Elizabethan era were mocked.