FREE ESSAY ON NURSE IN ROMEO AND JULIET

NURSE IN ROMEO AND JULIET

Many of Shakespeare's tragedies incorporate some character who is amusing, delightful, and
downright comic, injecting into the somberness of the plot line a note of levity. In
Romeo and Juliet, this is the character of Juliet's nurse. We do not have a name for her,
and yet we know much about her, for she is only too happy to tell us everything we'd like
to know -- sometimes two or three times. Garrulous, simple, and common, she is
none-the-less endearing because of her good heart and her deep love for Juliet -- and
even more important, she is essential to the development of the story itself.
When we first meet her, she and Lady Capulet are looking for Juliet. Lady Capulet wants
to talk to her daughter in private, but her nurse doesn't get the hint; a chance remark
about Juliet being thirteen years old launches her into a rambling remembrance of
Juliet's babyhood, which she can date precisely because Juliet would be the same age as
her own Susan, who died. She manages to toss into this conversation an earthquake, the
Capulets' trip to Mantua eleven years before, and the details of weaning children off the
breast. She manages, however, to throw in one bit of foreshadowing. She tells Lady
Capulet that one day, as the toddler Juliet was playing, the child fell flat on her face.
The Nurse's husband picked her up and teased her, telling her that when she got older,
she would "fall backward when [she has] more wit", and the child stopped crying and said
"Ay." (I, iii, 41, 47). What she means by this remark is that when girl-children are
small, they scamper and trip and fall forward, but when they are older, they find
themselves thrown backwards in bed. Since the crisis of Juliet's life will stem from love
-- from being thrown backwards in bed, as it were -- this is a significant prophecy. Just
as significantly, the toddler Juliet agrees to it, just as she is a willing participant
in the events that lead to her death.
The Nurse is entranced when Juliet is to be betrothed to Paris; she calls him "a man of
wax . . . a flower, in faith, a very flower" (I, 76-78). But she is not so loyal to Paris
that she does not see the attributes of Romeo as well. More to the point, she is as
caught up in the excitement of forbidden love as Juliet is, and she's thrilled to be part
of Juliet's plans for sending messages to her secret lover. When she dresses up to take
the message to Romeo, she apparently looks ridiculous; Mercutio calls her cloak "a sail"
and herself "a bawd", causing her to become "so vexed that every part about me quivers!"
(II, iv, 108, 136, 171). Romeo tells her to commend himself to Juliet, which so excites
her, that she can hardly stay to hear the rest; he protests that he hasn't given her the
message yet. Before they part, she makes another prescient comment: that "rosemary and
Romeo begin with [the same] letter" (II, iv, 220). Romeo asks what of it, and the Nurse
has no logical reply because it was simply another of her passing fancies; but the very
incongruity of the remark will cause audiences and readers to remember it. Rosemary is
the flower symbolizing the remembrance of the dead. 
It is important to note the way the Nurse gives her mouth free rein, and also the extent
to which she is driven by her emotions. We can argue that she is an old woman, but she
cannot be too old, for she nursed Juliet only eleven years before. In all likelihood the
reason the Capulets tolerate her behavior is that the child Juliet has been devoted to
her, and she has obviously been a servant of long standing in the household. But
occasionally the Nurse's passion for squeezing the very last drop of excitement or
emotion out of every situation becomes cruel. For example, when she returns from speaking
with Romeo, the Nurse procrastinates a long time before giving Juliet the news of her
beloved. Her excuse is that she is too tired to talk, and her bones ache; to which Juliet
replies, "I would thou hadst my bones, and I thy news!" (V, i, 27). Finally the Nurse
switches her focus of complaints onto Romeo. "Well, you have made a simple choice; you
know not how to choose a man; Romeo! No, not he; though his face be better than any
man's, yet his leg excels all men's; and for a hand, and a foot, and a body, though they
be not to be talked on, yet they are past compare; he is not the flower of courtesy, but,
I'll warrant him, as gentle as a lamb. Go thy ways, wench; serve God. What, have you
dined at home?" (V, i, 37-46). 
What has she said here? Juliet does not have good taste in men; the man she picked is
gorgeous; what he lacks in manners he makes up in sweetness. That doesn't sound like such
a bad choice! And yet again, in this passage's incongruity, we who know the story's
ending pick up something sinister in "you know not how to choose a man." For had Juliet
made the safer choice -- Paris, the count her parents wanted her to marry -- Juliet would
have lived, and in all likelihood so would Romeo. Had she "served God" in the sense of
obeying her parents (Shakespeare always comes down on the side of the status quo),
tragedy would not have resulted.
Even more strange is the way the Nurse announces to Juliet that the girl's cousin Tybalt
is dead by Romeo's hand. Actually, the Nurse says nothing about Tybalt for some thirty
lines; she enters the room, wailing and moaning that "he's dead, he's dead, he's dead!/
We are undone, lady, we are undone!/ Alack the day! he's gone, he's killed, he's dead!"
(III, ii, 36-38). The last person mentioned before this outburst was Romeo, so the
logical assumption on Juliet's part is that it's Romeo who is dead. She of course becomes
hysterically upset; her only question is whether Romeo has been murdered or has killed
himself. It is only after some twenty more lines that the Nurse mentions anything about
Tybalt -- calling him "the best friend I had", which of course he wasn't. She is simply
being overly dramatic again, unthinkingly at Juliet's expense. 
To the Nurse's credit, however, she recognizes Juliet's very real pain by the end of the
scene, and arranges a way for the lovers to come together in Juliet's bed, for the first
and only time. Throughout the play we have been treated to the Nurse's bawdy jokes about
sex, and so it is fitting that she should be the one to recognize how important this
meeting will be to them. When she goes to Romeo at Friar Laurence's cell, her histrionics
are gone; Romeo asks how Juliet is doing, and she describes Juliet's mood and behavior
accurately, doesn't ramble, and gives Romeo the ring Juliet sent for him. In the morning,
after Juliet and Romeo have spent the night together, it is the Nurse who awakens them so
Romeo can escape before the rest of the family finds he has been there.
But just as we were beginning to see a staunch ally in the Nurse, she shows that the
depth of her love and loyalty will never be as strong as her pragmatism. The tete-a-tete
between Romeo and Juliet was fun while it lasted. But now there seems little way for
Juliet to get out of marrying Paris, and the Nurse encourages her to go along with her
parents' wishes. Romeo is, of course, banished; this means he is as good as dead -- and
anyway, Romeo was "a dishclout" to Paris (III, v, 221). Juliet does not argue,
undoubtedly feeling that arguing displays more intensity of feeling than it is safe to
show someone you no longer trust. But after the Nurse leaves, we realize that Juliet is
now simply resolved to go her course without her.
It is tragic, and yet fitting, that the one to find the "dead" body of Juliet is the
Nurse. For Juliet's condition now is a powerful metaphor for her relationship to the
ultimately loving but unfaithful and uncomprehending Nurse. Juliet is dead to the world,
and she is also dead to the Nurse. She will have one more brief moment of consciousness
to us, the audience, her new confidantes; but the Nurse will never see her alive again.
The characterization of the Nurse, in short, is not introduced into Romeo and Juliet
purely for comic relief (although it provides plenty of that). The offhand remarks made
by the Nurse often prove oddly prophetic, foreshadowing tragic events that transpire
later in the play. But most importantly, her earthy pragmatism makes Juliet's ethereal
romanticism seem all the more heartbreakingly youthful and poignant, and the play's end
all the more tragic.