The Montague gentlemen; Romeo, Benvolio and Mercutio (Romeo’s closest friend) treat the nurse as a joke, they don’t take the Nurse very seriously at all, the young men mock the Nurse. As the nurse enters Mercutio exclaims ‘A sail, a sail’ Mercutio and Benvolio are joking that the nurses clothes are as large as a ships sail. The Nurse does not take this remark to heart, as she is a joker and a flirt, she loves the company of men, and acts differently when she is with men, rather than women she loves to have their attention.
The Nurse is genuinely upset about Tybalts killing. When she has to break the terrible news of her dear cousin’s death, she makes no effort to soften the blow, nor to help Juliet in her distress to bear it, at first for a while she lets Juliet think that her husband is dead. The Nurse mirrors Friar Lawrence’s role as she wants the same thing as the friar, for them to be together, even though they know it will all end up in tears, they both help their union, the nurse is basically playing cupid.
But what Juliet does not know is that her father has organised and arranged marriage between Paris and herself, Juliet refuses to go ahead with it and her parents are most upset. Capulet cries, “Hang thee, young baggage, disobedient wretch. I tell thee what: get thee to church a Thursday, or never after look me in the face.” This means ‘if you don’t marry Paris on Thursday, I’ll disown you’ and he is implying that she would rather his own daughter to be hanged than not marry Paris. In the 13th century women were like gifts that men could swap and give each other.
The Nurse does have lots of different aspects to her character she is a comic character; hearty, egotistical, loquacious, colloquial, vulgar, bawdy unintelligent/uneducated and insensitive. It seems at first that the nurse has taken the place of the cold Lady Capulet, as surrogate mother. Lady Capulet relied on the Nurse to bring up Juliet, but the Nurse would not have set a very good example to Juliet. Juliet is expected to grow up as a well mannered, proper woman, and she needed an upper class woman, like her mother to show her what she is expected to become when she becomes an adult. Lady Capulet was aware of the Nurses crude and colloquial personality and dialect, yet she still let a woman like that look after her only child.
When Capulet is berating Juliet about not wanting to marry Paris, the nurse defends Juliet “God in heaven bless her! You are to blame, my lord to rate her so”, Capulet reacts in a negative way to this comment and his true come out as well as his true feelings are expressed to the nurse. This makes the audience feel warmer toward her, as she has defended Juliet against Capulet. But later on in the play, the Nurse changes her feelings about the marriage between Romeo and Juliet. The Nurse basically tells Juliet to commit bigamy, by going ahead and marrying Paris, “Ancient damnation, oh most wicked fiend”, these are Juliet’s words towards the Nurse, when she suggested that she marry Paris. This is an example of the Nurses full insensitivity.
Toward the end of the play the Nurse’s presence would not be appropriate because she is seen as a comic character and in the final scenes the mood is solemn and darker as the news of Romeo and Juliet is heard. The Nurse is shocked and grief stricken at the news of her charges death.
The role of the Nurse was going on even the play started. Shakespeare emphasises that she has been Juliet’s life since she was a baby, she was Juliet’s wet nurse, at the time that Shakespere wrote Romeo and Juliet in, the role of women were delicate objects and men controlled everything. Women did not have a say.
The Nurse’s role in the play was crucial and William Shakespeare’s character fits in well with the story. Without the Nurse in the story of Romeo and Juliet there would not have been a romance or a wedding between Romeo and Juliet. The Nurse is the key to the plot. Juliet’s death would have ruined the Nurse’s whole life and she would have lost her job. The Nurse is one of the characters in which the author delighted; he has, with great subtilty of distinction, drawn her at once loquacious and secret, obsequious and insolent, trusty and dishonest, the Nurse is not a completely bad person. I feel that she just was not good at her job.
