Minor characters

• Nurse AO1 - Caring

  • Caring: When she thinks Juliet is dead: “Woeful, woeful day… never was seen so black a day as this”
• AO2: On thinking Juliet is dead, the nurse laments her death more than the other characters. The repetition of ‘woeful’ and the use of symbolism ‘black’ to convey death and devastation shows how much she cared for Juliet.
• AO3: The nurse will have looked after Juliet since she was a baby and they share a warm bond at the start of the play. Societal expectations drive them apart, when the nurse is forced to reinforce Capulet’s message that Juliet should marry Paris. This leads Juliet to feel betrayed and perhaps the nurse feels particularly guilty about this because she now believes her to be dead.
• Nurse presented as

  • Affectionate: “Thou wast the prettiest babe that e’er I nurs’d”. Pet names: “lamb”, “ladybird”, “pretty fool” 

  • Humorous: “you shall bear the burden soon at night” 

  • Obedient: “best you married with the County” when Capulet asserts himself
• Paris presented as

  • Respectable: “The gallant, young and noble gentleman”

  • Polite: “But now my Lord, what say you to my suit?”
• Prince Escalus 

  AO1 - Authoritative

  “Throw your mistemper’d weapons to the ground”
• AO3: Even though he is very powerful, the prince can’t escape the violence of the feud, which seems so ingrained in this patriarchal society, and he cannot stop it. His relatives, Paris and Mercutio get killed, which highlights how entrenched the conflict is.
• AO2: Use of the imperative reminds the audience that he is the one character in the play with authority over the Montagues and Capulets. This may be reassuring for the audience. However, he admits he’s been “winking” at their “discords” and not controlling the violence, maybe because the families are wealthy and it’s easier. Personification ‘mistemper’d weapons’ is also used which refers literally to the act of making the weapons and metaphorically, the rage behind the young men using them.
• Prince Escalus 

  AO1 - Restores calm in the denouement

  "Some shall be pardoned, and some punished”
• AO2: ‘Shall’ just asserts what will happen rather than a moral imperative. The Prince does not issue a sentence against any of the parties. The Prince then says to Montague and Capulet, "See what a scourge is laid upon your hate." He means that the punishment for their feud lies before them in the form of their dead children. But he also accepts some responsibility. For that, he has "lost a brace of kinsmen." He declares, "All are punished." The "all" referred to includes the extended families of the Montagues and Capulets as well as himself. There is a moral here to end the play.
• AO3: Perhaps Shakespeare was showing the idealised monarch in this play through Prince Escalus. In Elizabethan England, Queen Elizabeth was viewed as a more just ruler than Henry VIII so perhaps Shakespeare took that and made the Prince into a just and reasonable ruler, who puts his citizens first.
• Capulet and Montague males

  AO1 - Truculent and bawdy

  ‘My naked weapon is out’ in exposition- conflict established.
• AO2: Gregory and Sampson (Capulet servants) reveal the conflict between the two households in the exposition. Stichomythia is a structural technique in verse drama in which sequences of single alternating lines are given to alternating characters. It shows the Capulet males as bawdy and boastful.
• Personification of ‘naked weapon’ refers to the fact he has pulled his sword from its sheath but it’s also a sexual innuendo, so the initial conflict is presented as quite comedic, perhaps allowing audiences to question the maturity of the young males. Placing this scene of conflict in the exposition foreshadows the later, more tragic conflict.
• • AO3: The characters have a strong sense of honour; they are easily drawn into duels and find it difficult to ignore insults. This tendency to react without thought presents their fighting as futile and avoidable, frustrating the audience as the conflict drives the rest of the play and is a catalyst for the tragic climax.