The Nurse and Juliet Every story has more than one side. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is seemingly a play about two teenagers who go to great lengths to be together. However, the most impactful relationship in the play is not that of Romeo and Juliet, but that of Juliet and the Nurse. The Nurse is Juliet’s comfort and counsel, her trusted advisor; she loves Juliet as her own. Juliet is a young girl who has fallen passionately in love with and secretly married a young man belonging to a family that has a longstanding feud with her own. When he murders Juliet’s cousin, Juliet seeks the Nurse’s advice. However, when the Nurse does not tell Juliet what she so desperately wants to hear she feels betrayed. This provides the vehicle by which …show more content…
In Act Five Scene Three, Juliet’s parents, Capulet and Lady Capulet, are telling her that she must get married to the County Paris. Capulet has selected Paris to be the one who marries Juliet because he thinks Paris will be a good match for his daughter. However, neither Capulet nor Lady Capulet knows that Juliet is already married to Romeo, and that the Nurse not only knows about it but helped arrange it. The Nurse has this information because she is Juliet’s confidant. When Capulet threatens to make her leave home if she does not marry Paris, the Nurse comes to Juliet’s defense. “God in heaven bless her! You are to blame, my lord, to rate her so” (3.5, 170, 813). The Nurse fears that Capulet will follow through on his threat and she is worried for Juliet’s safety so she advises Juliet to forget about her husband Romeo and marry Paris. Juliet then asks if the Nurse gives this advice from her heart, she replies, “And from my soul too, else beshrew them both” (3.5, 229, 815 ). The Nurse miscalculates the importance of Juliet’s marriage to the young girl. This is a fatal mistake, leading to the climax of the story and Juliet’s untimely