Juliet's maturation throughout the play can easily be seen when juxtaposed to her childishness at the beginning of the play. Act 2 Scene 5 begins with the impatient rumblings of Juliet. Juliet, played by my partner, is awaiting the Nurse, played by me, who she had sent to gather the details of Romeo’s plans for marriage. She stomps her feet and shouts "she is lame!" in reference to how long the Nurse has been away. This emphasizes Juliet's childish impatience. When the Nurse enters, Juliet immediately asks her of news from Romeo. The Nurse, instead of answering, says, “I am aweary, Give me leave awhile. Fie how my bones ache!” I chose to over exaggerate my weariness. I grasped at my back and rubbed my knees to show my discomfort. The Nurse is doing this as a way of teasing Juliet. She’s egging Juliet on. I continued to exaggerate my aches and pains throughout the scene to play up that the Nurse was joking for the audience. Juliet remains oblivious, which solidifies that she is childish and easy to trick. Juliet continues to beg information from the Nurse, but the Nurse replies that she is out of breath. It was staged that Juliet stomped away after this complaint. While her back was turned, I had the Nurse look at Juliet's back and smile, but then begin to speak nonchalantly, almost flippantly, when she looked back at me. This demonstrated that the Nurse cared for Juliet and that her complaints we just for show. This happens again when the Nurse interrupts a description of Romeo with a “Have you dined at home?” Juliet continues to show that she is childish by stomping off whenever the Nurse doesn't tell her what she wants to hear. When Juliet voiced her objections to the Nurse’s out of context question, the Nurse again changes the subject, and to Juliet's dismay, complains that her head “beats as it would fall in twenty pieces!” I exaggerated this by holding a hand to my head and putting on a very obvious “in pain” face. The Nurse’s teasing shows that she plays games with Juliet. She does not encourage Juliet to be more mature even though she is considered of marrying age. The Nurse wants to preserve Juliet’s childhood by holding off the impending love affair. She will have to tell Juliet Romeo's news, but teasing her and dragging out their exchange allows the Nurse to interact with Juliet as if she was still a child, her child. When the Nurse interrupts a description of Romeo with another irrelevant and off topic question - "where is your mother?"-, Juliet yells and stomps her feet. In response, I folded my arms across my chest , but I smiled to show that the Nurse wasn’t truly angry, even though Juliet couldn’t see this. The Nurse wants Juliet to be happy, but in this scene I exaggerated and teased Juliet even though it made her angry, to show that the Nurse likes, even initiates, these conflicts because they bring her closer to Juliet. The Nurse is trying to hold on to Juliet, which shows that she fears the changes that will come as Juliet grows up. But when the Nurse finally turns around, it is with good news that Romeo waits at Friar Lawrence’s cell to marry Juliet. I grasped Juliet’s hands and smiled widely at her to show how genuinely overjoyed the Nurse was with Juliet’s happiness. We over acted and over exaggerated the Nurse's discomforts and Juliet's tantrums to show that the Nurse still treats Juliet like a child and that Juliet still acts like one.
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