However this happy and excited mood quickly becomes confused when the Nurse enters. The Nurses sadness and confusion makes Juliet confused because from Juliet asking questions about Romeo the Nurse says’ he’s dead, he’s dead… ‘He’s killed, he’s dead’ Juliet is distraught to hear this that she just can’t believe it. Then the Nurse confuses her even more by saying that Romeo is hostile but to Juliet who doesn’t know about the fight. It isn’t until later in the scene that we find out in a simple form what the Nurse is trying to say. Before this however Juliet goes through the motions of thinking that Romeo is dead so she is saddened ‘if he be slain, say ‘ay’; or if not, ’no’. Brief sounds determine my weal or woe’. This shows Juliet’s anguish because she cannot believe that Romeo is dead, but if he is then she herself is destroyed and she can never be herself again without Romeo as her husband.
In this part of the scene the Nurse also shows her straight-forward and open character by describing the scene ‘ a piteous corpse…pale as ashes… All in gore-blood’ this makes Juliet believe even more that Romeo is dead as the nurse has surely seen his body, from her vivid description. The Nurse then says that Tybalt is dead before revealing the truth.
When the Nurse tells Juliet the truth, she is partly relieved but has mixed emotions. She starts with blaming Romeo for Tybalts death ‘ o serpent heart, hid with a flow’ring face’ shows how she thinks that Romeo the devil or serpent has a lovely outside but is evil on the inside and how could she be fooled. Shakespeare then uses a lot of Oxymorons to describe her feelings ‘beautiful tyrant, fiend angelical, dove-feathered raven… a damned saint, an honourable villain’. This shows how she feels that she should stand by Romeo and love him because he is her husband, but that she also hates him for killing her cousin. From what Juliet has said the nurse then openly starts to criticize Romeo ‘all perjured, all forsworn…all dissemblers…shame come to Romeo’. However this makes Juliet stand up for Romeo feeling that it is her duty to do so. ‘ Sole monarch of the universal earth’ show how Juliet reflects Romeo as god and incharge of her whole world, with the power to change her. In this way her second reaction to stand by Romeo shows a maturer Juliet rather than the young, immediately blaming the one person that it seems causes Tybalts death.
‘That ‘banished’, that one word ‘banished’ hath slain ten thousand Tybalts.’ Shows how important Romeo is to her and that the fact that Romeo has been banished and that she may not see him again is far more important than lots of her cousins being killed. Shows how Juliet’s emotions are again changing as she slowly realises what Romeo’s banishment means.
In this scene Shakespeare uses different imagery to describe Juliet’s emotions at different times. ‘Hood my unmanned blood bating in my cheeks, with thy black mantle’. Shows how she is unmanned (still a virgin) and needs training and she is ‘bated’ or very excited until Romeo ‘hood’s’ her and then she will be manned as she will have lost her virginity. When Juliet becomes confused Shakespeare uses a variety of the same sounding words , ‘I’ ‘Ay’, ‘eye’.In this part Juliet is exclaiming that if it is true ‘ay’ that Romeo is dead then she will be killed by the look ‘eye’ of a cockatrice, and that she won’t be able to live without him.
