In her first appearance in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Juliet says marriage is “an honor that [she] dream[s] not of.” (1.3, 71)) At the beginning of the play, she is but a child. She is unfailingly loyal to her parents and promises that she will not “endart [her] eye” more than her parents’ “gives strength to make it fly.”(1.3, 104-105) But her mother’s concerns have less to do with the happiness of her daughter, but with ensuring the stability of a favorable match for her family’s reputation. When Lady Capulet exits without a final word of encouragement for her daughter, it is the Nurse who encourages Juliet to “ seek happy nights to happy days.”(1.3, 112) The Nurse has cared for Juliet since her infancy and treats her as a surrogate daughter. Her care is unwavering. Juliet is her pupil and seeks advice from her confidant, but after she meets Romeo, her perspective changes and her innocence is no longer ignorance. She begin to form her own opinions and think independently, which can be seen through how she distances herself from the Nurse. I staged Act 2 Scene 5, and excerpts from Act 3 Scene 2 and Act 3 Scene 5 to show this evolution. These scenes show the gradual process of Juliet outgrowing her Nurse. The changes in Juliet’s relationship with the Nurse, from close companions to a young woman and her childhood attendant, provide evidence of Juliet’s evolution into an independent thinker. This evolution was shown by the Nurse's change from a boisterous and opinionated character to a more timid and openly powerless woman as Juliet's behavior transitioned from a childish girl to a more assertive young adult.
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.(2.5, 4) 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!”(2.5, 26-27) 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. 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.(2.5, 47) 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!”(2.5,52) 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. 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.(2.5, 65) In response, I folded my arms across my chest and turned away from Juliet, 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. But eventually the Nurse does turn around with good news entailing Juliet’s marriage. 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, in the beginning of the play, the Nurse still treats Juliet like a child and that Juliet still acts like one.
Juliet's transition becomes clear in her new found authoritative tone in Act 3 Scene 2. This scene begins when I run in, visibly distressed. I ran my hands through my hair to show my distress. I start screaming that “he’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead.”(3.2, 42) Shakespeare never names who it is that’s dead, so Juliet jumps to the worst case scenario. Juliet comes running to me from her seat across the stage. The Nurse is too invested in her own grief to pay much attention to Juliet, which I showed by looking out into the distance- toward the audience- instead of at Juliet. Juliet asks, “Can heaven be so envious?”(3.2, 45) I face Juliet and reply angrily and forcefully with “Romeo can,” but then I turn away and say mournfully that “heaven cannot," meaning that it is Romeo's fault not fate or God's, that Tybalt is dead.(3.2, 46-47) This is to show that I blame Romeo, but it also serves to further upset Juliet. She concludes that it is Romeo that is dead and that he might have killed himself. I only turned my attention fully to Juliet when I described the wound the Nurse saw to further demonstrate how distraught I was, before turning back to look out into the distance and then at my shaking hands. I stepped forward when I cry out about Tybalt. Juliet becomes very upset after this, fearing that both are dead. This is when the Nurse finally realizes the misunderstanding that she caused. She remedies it with a slow and sad “Tybalt is gone” and then a short, clear, and angry “and Romeo banished.”(3.2, 75) This is to show that the Nurse holds disdain for Romeo and wants Juliet to know it. Displaying this attitude immediately also pushes Juliet to agree, which is what the Nurse wants Juliet to do. I faced Juliet and grabbed her arm and said this line while looking into her eyes. This acted as a kind of imposition of the Nurse’s views of Juliet. Juliet initially agrees with the Nurse, calling Romeo a “damned saint, an honorable villain,”(3.2, 85) but when the Nurse delivers an unrepentant “Shame come to Romeo,” Juliet experiences a shift.(3.2, 98) She begins to defend Romeo. She steps forward. This acts as a visual representation of Juliet’s defiance. She straightens her back to demonstrate her resolve. She gets angrier as she continues and calls herself “a beast to chide at him!”(3.2, 104) I take a step back to demonstrate that the Nurse is taking a back seat. In a lower, incredulous, and almost scandalized voice, I ask, “ Will you speak well of him that kill'd your cousin?”(3.2, 105) Juliet takes another step forward and begins to valiantly defend her husband. Originally, the Nurse and Juliet were standing side by side, but now the Nurse is up stage and further stage right, while Juliet has gone downstage and further stage left. This shows a physical separation to pair with the growing emotional one. When Juliet begins to cry, she turns away from my outstretched hand. The Nurse then exits to retrieve Romeo to comfort her. The Nurse is no longer Juliet's source of comfort. In this scene, Juliet begins to show the the audience that she can think for herself and is ready to stand up for what she cares about.
In Act 3 Scene 5, Juliet and the Nurse's relationship suffers irreparable damage. We only performed the ending of the scene that took place between just the Nurse and Juliet. It begins with Juliet throwing herself on the floor and burying her head in the Nurse's lap. She's crying over her father's threat of disownment if she didn't marry Paris. She's desperate for the comfort of her Nurse, who has been the only person on her side since she was born. She ask for comfort and counsel, but the advice the Nurse gave was not what Juliet wanted. The Nurse said that, because the circumstances were what they were, she thought "it best [she] married with the County."(3.5, 230) I had been petting Juliet's head in a comforting gesture, and at these words, Juliet quickly removed herself from my lap and pushed herself away a distance. I moved toward her to comfort her and explain myself, but as I reached toward her, she turned her head away from my hand. This shows that Juliet was rejecting the comfort of her Nurse. She no longer needed her childhood companion. I spoke softer in this scene than in the previous ones. I tried to demonstrate through my comforting gestures and placating tone that the Nurse only wanted what was best for Juliet because she cared for her. Juliet agreed with the Nurse, but she spoke monotonously and sat stiffly next to her, which showed that she didn't actually agree with the Nurse. When the Nurse exits to send news to Juliet, Juliet gets up and rants. She is angry that the Nurse, who had praised Romeo, was telling her to break her marriage vows. She hid her true feelings from the Nurse because she no longer felt she could trust her. She realizes she is effectively on her own with Romeo banished and is not afraid to take her own life if it comes down to it. My partner stood proud and spoke defiantly as she spoke this final monologue. This scene shows Juliet's move toward independence.
Through the first scene in our sequence, my partner and I established that Juliet still had the mind of a wistful child at the beginning of the play, who relied on the support and confidence of the Nurse. In the second scene, Juliet receives bad news, and instead of seeking the comfort of the Nurse, seeks Romeo to ease her pain. She boldly and fiercely defends Romeo and chides the Nurse for treating him as the bad guy. She still shares most aspects of her life with the Nurse, but by the last scene, Juliet is hiding her emotions from the Nurse. She lies to the Nurse about her intentions and rejects her comfort. Throughout the play, Juliet outgrows the Nurse's companionship. She begins to take her life into her own hands, disregarding even the most well intended advice in favor of her own will. Juliet's distancing from the Nurse runs parallel to her maturation. In my scenes, we evolved our posturing and switched our roles in terms of dominance. Juliet was the bold one, while the Nurse becomes softer and more in Juliet's background. In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, the Nurse's shrinking role in Juliet's life can be used as an indication of Juliet's growing maturity.
