the nurse

• Blank verse


  Iambic pentameter that does not rhyme, with lines of 10 syllables and alternating unstressed and stressed syllables
• Prose


  Ordinary written language without a rhyme scheme or specific metrical structure
• Rhymed verse


  Lines of verse which rhyme, may be in iambic pentameter or another rhyme scheme
• Shakespeare uses blank verse, prose, and rhymed verse in Romeo and Juliet
• Blank verse


  • Used by upper class characters and nobility
  • Signifies importance of a character
• Wet nurse


  A woman of lower class employed to breastfeed the child of a higher class family
• Nurse


  • Represents nurturing and comedy
  • Transcends her lower class status due to close relationship with Juliet
• Nurse's malapropisms


  • "I will tell her sir that you do protest"
  • "if you be he sir I desire some confidence with you"
• Juliet's relationship with Nurse


  Weakens as Juliet becomes a woman and moves beyond needing a full-time caretaker
• Nurse has more lines of dialogue than anyone else in the play except Romeo, Juliet, and Friar Lawrence
• Nurse is absent from the final scene of the play, unlike most other major characters
• Nurse: '"faith I can tell her age unto an hour"'
• Nurse's absence at the end of the play represents the loss of nurturing and comedic attributes in the unredeemed social order