The Prosecution Of The Nurse In Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, today my team and myself present to you the prosecution of the Nurse. She stands on trial for 4 crimes. We prosecute the Nurse for incitement of bigamy, obstruction of justice, harboring a fugitive, and child negligence. These illegal acts played a large role in the deaths of Romeo and Juliet. Romeo and Juliet were star-crossed lovers, lovers at first sight if you will. And they would be still living today if the Nurse had not acted so carelessly. I am here today to remind all of you that the Nurse is indeed guilty and that the cold hard evidence my team will present to you proves that she is guilty as charged.

For the jury, I would like to provide a background of Romeo and Juliet and their story. Romeo and

Juliet is then forced to marry Paris, a nobleman, but she refuses and seeks the help of Friar Laurence once again. He gives Juliet a potion that will make her appear dead for 42 hours, allowing her to escape to Romeo's side when she wakes up.

However, Romeo believes that Juliet is dead when he hears the news and he returns to Verona to kill himself next to her tomb. Juliet awakens to find Romeo dead beside her and kills herself as well. The tragic ending brings the two families together in grief and ends the feud between them.

While there are many different characters in this play, the Nurse is a prominent character shown in most of the play. She works with the Capulets, and most closely Juliet.

On the outside, the Nurse seems like an innocent, caring woman that puts her job first before anything else, but you all would be wrong. The Nurse had been a loved and quite useful member of their family, until now. She has betrayed them, allowing for the death of their child, Juliet. While the Nurse did many horrible things, when she harbored a fugitive, Romeo, is where it all

By harboring a fugitive, the Nurse allowed Romeo to marry Juliet which led to Juliet's bigamy against Romeo and Paris.

After the Nurse had committed the crime of harboring a fugitive, she then added to that and then obstructed the law, the justice that is the heart of all governments. She did this by directly lying to her employer when she was asked where Romeo went. We all know that she knew where exactly he was. She knew that Romeo was banished, but helped him anyway, committing the crime of harboring. This information could have been used to find Romeo, and this information would have been used by the government and the Prince, leading to the Nurse obstructing