The Nurse Flashcards
‘wast the prettiest babe that e’er..nursed’
-superlative - the superlative ‘prettiest’ emphasises an almost excessive adoration suggesting a bond that goes beyond duty for the nurse and her pure adoration for Juliet. She speaks fondly and with a sense of nostalgia, reminiscing about Juliet’s childhood as if she were her own daughter. This maternal and emotional bond is starkly contrasted with the emotional separation between Juliet and lady capulet.
-context - aristocratic elizabethans would have their children raised by wet nurses, who would breast-feed them in place of their mothers and nanny them. This is the relationship between the nurse and Juliet; it is extremely maternal.
‘what lamb! what ladybird!’
-exclamative sentence - the nurse is often frivolous and melodramatic which is evident of her opening line of the play. The exclamatory tone establishes her character as excitable and prone to rambling
-paragon of the working class - In Shakespeares plays the working class characters are often ridiculed depicted as lacking intelligence and utilised as comic relief. Therefore, the nurses use of bawdy and animated language provides a brief escape from the bleak tragic themes that permeate the play. As the only character from the working class, the nurse serves as a representation of Shakespeares perception of this social class. By parodying her character, Shakespeare indirectly parodies the working class as a whole.
