Nurse

Play

Romeo and Juliet

Summary

Juliet's garrulous, warm, and bawdy nurse who has raised her from infancy and is, until the play's crisis, her most intimate confidante. She serves as the go-between for Romeo and Juliet's courtship with cheerful earthiness, and her comedy is among the play's most beloved. But when Juliet most needs her — after Romeo's banishment and her father's insistence on the Paris marriage — the Nurse advises practical accommodation rather than love, and her failure at this moment marks the play's complete isolation of Juliet.

Notable Quotations

"O, she says nothing, sir, but weeps and weeps; / And now falls on her bed, and then starts up, / And Tybalt calls; and then on Romeo cries." *(III.iii)*

"I think it best you married with the County. / O, he's a lovely gentleman!" *(III.v)*

"What a man are you!" *(II.iv)*

Cross-references

• Romeo and Juliet — the play
• Tragedies
• character_juliet — her charge, whom she ultimately fails
• character_romeo — whose marriage to Juliet she facilitates
• character_capulet — the household she serves