Compare and Contrast Romeo and Nurse's Attitudes towards Love.

   Nurse on the other hand is very open about love. She seems very experienced in life and seems to have a lot of knowledge on love. But at the beginning of the play she is not really interested in her own love life but in the love life of Juliet. She cares for Juliet and is more like a mother to her. She is eager for her to find a husband who she likes, not a husband who is forced upon her. She is always making rude references and innuendos to try and encourage Juliet’s love life to blossom. This is shown in Act 1 Scene 3 “Go girl seek happy nights to happy days.”

   Romeo soon falls out of love with Rosaline though and as soon as he sees Juliet it is like love at first sight. “So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows.” Romeo refers to Juliet as being a white dove who is among black crows. This shows us that although Romeo thinks he is wise on the subject of love his inexperience and immaturity shines through because he is always falling in and out of love. When Romeo meets Juliet for the first time the first fourteen lines which they exchange are written in sonnet form. This adds to Romeo’s view on love as being very important as sonnets are usually written about love and the use of the sonnet shows that Romeo is in love.

   Nurse is the first person of the Capulet family who knows of the love between Romeo and Juliet and that they have got married and she keeps this a secret as is Juliet’s what Juliet wanted. She also agrees with Juliet when Juliet has been arranged to marry Paris. Juliet does not want to marry Paris and she tells Nurse this. She also helps Romeo and Juliet set up a nigh time meeting in Juliet’s bedroom after the wedding where they can make love. Also we start to see how Nurse reacts when she is the one who is being approached by men. When giving advice to Juliet about love she seems to joke about the subject more than anything but in Act 2 Scene 4 when faced with three young men teasing her and making dirty innuendos Nurse seems to be very disgusted with their behaviour “I am not one of his flirt-girls.”

   Towards the end of the play both Nurse and Romeo’s attitudes to love change dramatically. Romeo turns from being a naïve young boy who falls in and out of love easily into a man who cares deeply for Juliet. This is shown by his loyalty to her in the end of the play. In Act 5 Scene 3 Romeo fights Paris to get into the tomb where Juliet is supposedly dead. Nothing will stop Romeo getting into the tomb and his love towards Juliet is at its greatest here.

   Nurse’s attitude to love also changes dramatically here. From being very supportive to Juliet and making rude jokes about love she betrays Juliet and says that she should marry Paris because Romeo has committed a terrible crime.

   In conclusion I think that Romeo and Nurse have very different attitudes to love at the beginning of the play. Romeo is very passionate about love but is too young to actually know what real love is and he only thinks he is in love. This is shown by his use of oxymoron’s and odd behaviour. Nurse is very sexually based and her sexual innuendos show this. Towards the end of the play both of their attitudes have changed dramatically. Romeo seems to have matured  and his attitude to love has changed because he now knows what true love is because he actually does love Juliet. His use of extreme language helps us to understand his attitude to his love to Juliet. The Nurse now is less sexually based and she has grown apart from Juliet. She betrays Juliet and this shows us that her attitude towards love has changed.