This is an extremely important part of the scene, which begins on the Tuesday morning, with Romeo and Juliet, in a light mood, discussing their love, which shows innocence and purity. In the Franco Zeffirelli film, he portrays this by having Romeo and Juliet spending the night together. This represents the love and affection they have for each other. Zeffirelli uses white linen as the bed sheets, to represent purity and Juliet is also dressed white which represents her innocence.
In this film you can tell straight away that it is morning because the sun shines through the white curtains. This is also the same in the Baz Luhrmann edition of Romeo and Juliet unlike in the BBC version, which uses dark linen for the curtains and directs Lady Capulet to come into Juliet’s bedroom with a lit candle. The lit candle is a good source of purity and it also looks a little romantic, which gives the essence of love.
Romeo and Juliet argue about the fact that it is day. Juliet believes it is still night and the light coming through the windows is from the moon. Juliet doesn’t want Romeo to go but if he stays he will die and Juliet, after a while, changes her mind and tells Romeo to go but Romeo doesn’t want to go now, “Let me be ta’en, let me be put to death;”
Through this part of the scene the language of Juliet is very apprehensive, and that she doesn’t know what is going to happen if Romeo stays. I think this is why Juliet changes her mind because Romeo tells her what will happen to him if he stays, “I must be gone and live, or stay and die.” If I was to portray this, I would use the BBC version idea of having dark linen for curtains, with light shining through to give the effect of both day and night, hopefully baffling the audience into thinking about whether it is actually dark. Juliet would then be pulling Romeo back into bed but when she changes her mind, she should push him away and not look at him when she is speaking. When the Nurse comes in Juliet should rush Romeo out and say goodbye quickly.
When the Nurse comes in she seems to be acting quite hastily, “The day is broke, be wary, look about.” I think this is not just because Juliet would get into trouble but because the Nurse doesn’t want to get herself into trouble. At this point the view we get of the Nurse is that she is not very supportive towards Juliet throughout this scene, which reveals a weakness in the Nurse’s character because before this scene she built up a good friendship but now things have started to change. At first I thought that the relationship between the Nurse and Juliet was flawless. They communicated well and were very close but then as the scene progresses the Nurse becomes more devious and shifty giving the idea that Juliet should obey the idea of her marrying Paris even if she doesn’t want to.
At the end of this scene Juliet feels isolated a she has no one, everyone has turned on her. But what the Nurse doesn’t know is that Juliet is going to go along with what she has said about telling her parents that she will marry Paris.
As soon as the Nurse leaves Juliet, Juliet expresses her true feelings about the Nurses, “Ancient damnation! O most wicked fiend!” Juliet will never trust the Nurse again; “Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain.”
