Nurse

At a glance

The Nurse breastfed and raised Juliet; Shakespeare makes her the first half's comic voice, Juliet's mother in all but birth, and the counsellor who fails her.

• Role in the plot: go-between for the secret wedding, then adviser of a second; absent at the end.
• Defining traits:
  • Earthy: "Women grow by men" (Act 1, Scene 3).
  • Brave, for a servant: "You are to blame, my lord" (Act 3, Scene 5).
  • Practical to a fault: "Romeo's a dishclout to him" (Act 3, Scene 5).
• Themes she carries: family and authority; love; gender and honour; youth and impulsiveness; death and time.
• Relationships and foils: Juliet (practical love against a vow); Lady Capulet (the mother who talks through her); the Friar (the other substitute parent); Mercutio (the other bawdy voice).

Their journey

1. The memory (Act 1, Scenes 3 and 5). Sent out and at once called back by Lady Capulet, she takes over the scene with Susan, the weaning and a bawdy joke. At the feast she names Romeo "a Montague".
2. The go-between (Act 2, Scenes 4 and 5). She tests Romeo like a parent ("a fool's paradise"), then teases Juliet with the news and sends her to be married.
3. The bearer of disaster (Act 3, Scenes 2 and 3). Her "he's dead, he's dead, he's dead!" names no one, and "Shame come to Romeo!" turns Juliet to his defence. Yet she fetches him for the wedding night.
4. Defender and betrayer (Act 3, Scene 5). She defends Juliet to her father, then, once the mother refuses to speak, advises marrying Paris: the turning point. Left alone, Juliet shuts her out of her "bosom", her heart and secrets: "Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain."
5. Shut out (Act 4, Scenes 3 to 5). Sent away for the night, she goes, then wakes the "bride" with jokes about Paris and finds her seemingly dead.
6. Gone (Act 4, Scene 5; Act 5, Scene 3). Her last lines go to the musicians; in the final scene the Friar mentions her once.

Her love for Juliet is the play's warmest and its most practical, and when practicality wins, Juliet cuts her off.

Key quotations

• "Thou wast the prettiest babe that e'er I nursed. / An I might live to see thee married once" (Act 1, Scene 3). The superlative is a professional's pride and a mother's love at once. "Once" means one day; ironically, she lives to see Juliet married once, in secret, then urges a second.
• "Do you not see that I am out of breath?" (Act 2, Scene 5). She plays the "old folks" Juliet has just called "Unwieldy, slow, heavy"; Juliet throws "breath" back at her three times. Dramatic irony (we know the news is good) makes the delay a tease. AQA's 2024 report rewarded reading "fast and slow as a metaphor for youth and age".
• "Stand up, stand up. Stand an you be a man." (Act 3, Scene 3). "Stand" four times in two lines: a nurse lifting a fallen child. "An" means if: her test of a man is duty, "For Juliet's sake", not the sword.
• "You are to blame, my lord, to rate her so." (Act 3, Scene 5). The respectful "my lord" beside the bald "You are to blame" puts a servant's voice and a parent's in one line. He answers the speaker, not the point: "Peace, you mumbling fool!"
• "I think it best you married with the County." (Act 3, Scene 5). The understatement "best" makes bigamy sound like common sense, and she means it: "And from my soul too". The kitchen word "dishclout" (a dishcloth) makes Juliet's husband a rag: she weighs men as matches.
• "O woe, O woeful, woeful, woeful day!" (Act 4, Scene 5). The piled repetition of "woeful" can sound hollow, even comic, as one of four matching laments. Or it is the truest grief in the room, from a woman with plainer words than her employers and one daughter already buried.

How Shakespeare builds them

• A voice he moved and enlarged. Brooke's "prating nurse" tells Romeus how she suckled "a pretty babe". Shakespeare gives the memory to Juliet and her mother (Act 1, Scene 3), where its rambling puts "great stress on Juliet's age" (Stanley Wells). Romeo gets only a start, "when 'twas a little prating thing" (Act 2, Scene 4), before she breaks off for Paris.
• Verse and prose by mode, not rank. Blank verse in Act 1, Scene 3, like her employers; prose with the young men in Act 2, Scene 4; in Act 2, Scene 5, prose for her teasing verdict on Romeo ("Well, you have made a simple choice") and verse again for her aches.
• Bawdy double meanings. Her husband's "Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit" (Act 1, Scene 3) turns a toddler's tumble into a wedding night. Paris "hath set up his rest / That you shall rest but little" (Act 4, Scene 5): a gambler's whole stake and a sleepless night, joked over a drugged girl.
• Slips and pet names. Her malapropisms are "confidence" for conference and "sententious" for sentence, a memorable saying (Act 2, Scene 4). "Lamb" and "ladybird" (Act 1, Scene 3) and "Sweetheart" (Act 4, Scene 5) are endearments Juliet's mother never uses.

Context

• The wet-nurse. The historian Valerie Fildes calls the wet-nurse a "surrogate mother"; she usually took the baby to her own home. Juliet's still lives in the house nearly fourteen years on, and her own daughter, Juliet's age, has died ("Susan is with God", Act 1, Scene 3): Juliet is the child she kept.
• Brooke's ending. Brooke's Prince banishes his Nurse for hiding the marriage. Shakespeare's Prince names no one ("Some shall be pardoned, and some punishèd", Act 5, Scene 3), although the Friar has just told him "Her nurse is privy" to the marriage. Her fate is never spoken: she is simply absent.

Interpretations

• The betrayer. Juliet's verdict is "Ancient damnation" (Act 3, Scene 5), and AQA's June 2024 report lists "her betrayal by the nurse" among her difficulties. Samuel Johnson (1765) said Shakespeare drew her "obsequious and insolent, trusty and dishonest": in Act 3, Scene 5 she keeps the lovers' secret and defies Capulet, then falls in with his plan.
• The pragmatist. The advice is reasoned, not spiteful: Romeo "dares ne'er come back", and a woman who has lost one daughter wants this one safe. Perhaps, too, a servant whose roof is Capulet's can afford no other advice. Against this, it asks Juliet to be "forsworn" (Juliet's word: to break her marriage vow) and runs her husband down.
• The surrogate mother. AQA's June 2025 report credited readings of the Nurse and the Friar in loco parentis (in place of a parent). R. F. Hill (1958) hears her "woeful" lament as hollow: she "evinced no personal affection for Juliet". Answer him with the weaning she dates to the day (Act 1, Scene 3) and her defence of Juliet to Capulet. Read this way, Act 3, Scene 5 is a parent failing, not a servant turning.

How to write about them

Three arguments a grade 9 answer could build:

1. She is the mother Juliet actually has. Lady Capulet cannot talk to her daughter without her, so Act 3, Scene 5 is a double abandonment, mother then Nurse, that sends Juliet to the Friar and the vial.
2. Her love is real but practical, and it fails at the vow. She praises Romeo and Paris alike, by face, leg and "eye". Juliet's "faith in heaven" meets her "no use of him" (Act 3, Scene 5).
3. She is the comedy's voice, and her exit matters. Emma Smith (2015): "both lovers must leave aside their comic companions". The reconciliation lacks the nurture and comedy she stood for, but Juliet dismissed her first.

Moments to reach for:

• Parents and children, adults and young people: Lady Capulet's "come back again" (Act 1, Scene 3); "I think it best" (Act 3, Scene 5); Juliet's "leave me to myself tonight" (Act 4, Scene 3).
• "The difficulties faced by Juliet" (June 2024): the delay of Act 2, Scene 5; the advice of Act 3, Scene 5.
• Attitudes towards love (Specimen 2's "the Nurse's more earthy attitude"): "Women grow by men" (Act 1, Scene 3); "dishclout" (Act 3, Scene 5).