Shakespeare engages the audience's interest in Romeo and Juliet by choosing the character of the nurse to be a humorous messenger who moves the plot along.

Authors Avatar

GCSE English Coursework Assignment

Shakespeare engages the audience’s interest in Romeo and Juliet by choosing the character of the nurse to be a humorous messenger who moves the plot along. It is important to remember that the nurse’s status in high within the Capulet household and the nurse is above the rest of the servants as she has the freedom to come and go from the house as she pleases and she has open access to Juliet. Juliet confides and trusts in the nurse as the nurse trusts Juliet, which makes their relationship in the household very strong. However when the Nurse is outside of the household, her importance level lowers, as she becomes a lower class figure. The audience can see how the nurse is intelligent because she can switch between poetry and prose. An example of this is in Act 2 Scene 5 when the nurse is talking to Juliet about her marrying Romeo. She starts in verse and ends in prose as she tells Juliet how she thinks that Paris is the better of the two gentlemen for her. Another example is in Act 2 Scene 4 where the nurse meets with Mercutio and Romeo and she talks to them in prose.

The nurse is caught between two places throughout most of the play. In one, she is Juliet’s guardian and is responsible for Juliet and looks out for her as a mother figure but in her other role, she is more of a friend to Juliet and helps her out where her love life is concerned and is used as a messenger between Juliet and Romeo. The nurse having lost her only daughter obviously knows that to have a daughter is very special, so she looks after Juliet as if she were her own. Shakespeare puts across the audience that the nurse is and would be a better mother to Juliet then Lady Capulet could ever be. This is shown in Act 1 Scene 3 when the audience can see the contrast in the Nurse and Lady Capulet. The audience can see that the nurse can relate to Juliet as a daughter because of her loss and Shakespeare shows the audience this by the speech used by both characters. “Tell me, daughter Juliet”, the audience can tell straight away that Lady Capulet is very formal with Juliet, not only calling her by her name, but also by her status “daughter”. The audience can tell that the nurse cares so much for Juliet as she jumps in to defend Juliet from Lord Capulet, “you are to blame to rate her so”. The audience can also see how right from the start of the play, that she seems to feel deeply for Juliet. In Act 1 Scene 3 again, the nurse brings back lots of memories of Susan (the nurse’s daughter who she lost) and Juliet when she was young. She goes into great depth explaining this, which shows how highly she thinks of Juliet. “I remember it well… I shall never forget it.” These quotations show how important these events were to the Nurse as she recalls them in such detail, “tis since the earthquake now eleven years, and she was weaned – I shall never forget it.” The nurse’s affection toward Juliet I because she has transferred her affection from her own daughter who died toward Juliet and it seems that Juliet is all she has, “well Susan is with God.” Whilst the nurse does go to great lengths to tell her story she keeps interrupting herself with irrelevant points which makes her story appear muddled, “nay I do bear a brain but as I said.”

Join now!

The Nurse has a very close relationship with Juliet and at first is supportive of her love with Romeo. The nurse shows how much she cares for Juliet by looking out for her. The nurse does this by warning Romeo to be nice to Juliet or there will be trouble. “But first let me tell ye, if ye should lead her in a fools paradise, as they say, it were a very gross kind of behaviour.” It is almost a maternal relationship as the Nurse speaks of how she raised Juliet and weaned her, “and she was weaned”. The nurse and ...

This is a preview of the whole essay