Romeo and Juliet (Vol. 33) | Barbara Everett (essay date 1972)
Barbara Everett (essay date 1972)
SOURCE: "Romeo and Juliet: The Nurse's Story," in Critical Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 2, Summer, 1972, pp. 129-39.
[In the following essay, Everett studies the role of the Nurse and offers a detailed analysis of her speech from Act I, scene iii.]
The heroine of Romeo and Juliet enters the play late. Not until the third scene of the first act is she called onstage by her mother and her Nurse, who are also appearing here for the first time. The latter part of this scene is given to Lady Capulet's brisk and formal announcement of an offer for her daughter, with Juliet's timid and obedient response. All the earlier part of it is dominated by the Nurse, and her reminiscences of the past set the tone for the first appearance of the only three really important women in this romantic and domestic tragedy. Lady Capulet's conventional niceties make their point too, but it is the Nurse who holds the...
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