Nurse's Song E - AO5

• The children are an 'expression of a potential freedom' that the Nurse must 'repress at all costs'
• 'Green and pale' is traditionally associated with the 'sex-starved spinster' - perhaps showing the result of repression of self-expression and sexual fulfillment.
• The Nurse acts as a surrogate mother to the children, with no family of her own - perhaps this contributes to her bitterness.
• 'A parody' of the corresponding song from Innocence.

  Keynes
• Proto-Marxists reading: The Nurse is not only resentful of the (likely upper-class) children's youth, but also her role as their servant in order to make money. Her rhetoric reflects the internalised capitalist idea of work over meaningless play, she may even resent the children's economic status that allows them to play instead of going into the labour force.