Juliet's impatience is shown through her dialogue with the nurse in this scene.
The nurse has raised Juliet, and she loves Juliet as her own daughter. She can sense that Juliet's relationship with Romeo is causing Juliet to be completely unlike herself. She sees Juliet's impatience especially clearly when she returns with the message and finds Juliet in a bit of a frantic state. The nurse uses this to have some fun before delivering the good news. She switches between prose and iambic pentameter, causing rhythm changes and keeping the scene upbeat and fun. She also playfully prolongs telling Juliet the news, knowing it will be torture for her to wait.
Though his face be better than any man’s, yet his leg excels all men’s, and for a hand and a foot and a body, though they be not to be talk’d on, yet they are past compare. He is not the flower of courtesy, but I’ll warrant him, as gentle as a lamb.
She asks Juliet whether she has eaten yet:
Go thy ways, wench, serve God. What, have you din’d at home?
She complains excessively about her fatigue:
Lord, how my head aches! What a head have I!
It beats as it would fall in twenty pieces.
My back a’ t’ other side—ah, my back, my back!
And she does all this before she finally tells Juliet about the plan to marry Romeo. Sometimes we can learn a lot about a character through how they are seen by the people closest to them.
Juliet is impatient that the nurse has arrived late and delays in telling Juliet what Romeo's answer is to marriage. In the previous scene, the Nurse seeks out Romeo and encounters him with his friends in the town square. Mercutio greets the Nurse and tells her that it is afternoon:
Mercutio: God ye good den, fair gentlewoman.
Nurse :Is it good den?
Mercutio: 'Tis no less, I tell you, for the bawdy hand of thedial is now upon the prick of noon. (2.4.55-57)
Understanding the previous scene reveals Juliet's impatience as she wonders why the nurse is so late:
Juliet: The clock struck nine when I did send the nurse;
In half an hour she promised to return. (2.5.1-2)
The nurse is over three hours late by time that she does return with news from Romeo. In lines 16-17, Juliet also notes that the nurse is old and thus slow. Juliet then implores the nurse to tell her what news she has from Romeo, using repetitive compliments such as "good, good nurse" (2.5.28) and "sweet, sweet, sweet nurse" (2.5.47). As the nurse continues to keep Juliet in suspense, the nurse notes that Juliet responses to her angrily (2.5.55).
Juliet's nurse has been acting as a go-between. As Romeo and Juliet are unable to meet in person, the Nurse scuttles back and forth between them, carrying messages. In act 2, scene 5, Juliet is incredibly impatient. She's waiting for the Nurse to return from meeting with Romeo. The Nurse was supposed to have returned by nine o'clock, but now it's noon; she's three hours late. Juliet shows her youth and immaturity by fretting over what may have happened. She's also highly impetuous, believing that messengers of love should be quick, certainly much quicker than the slow-moving Nurse:
Love’s heralds should be thoughts, Which ten times faster glide than the sun’s beams, Driving back shadows over louring hills. Therefore do nimble-pinioned doves draw love And therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid wings.
In her impatience, Juliet shows herself to be a tad disrespectful of her elders:
My words would bandy her to my sweet love, And his to me. But old folks, many feign as they were dead, Unwieldy, slow, heavy, and pale as lead.
Messages between the two star-cross'd lovers should be scooting back and forth like greased lightning, but they're not, because the Nurse is slow, fat, and old. When the Nurse finally turns up, Juliet is desperate for information:
Now, good sweet Nurse—O Lord, why look’st thou sad? Though news be sad, yet tell them merrily. If good, thou shamest the music of sweet news By playing it to me with so sour a face.
But the Nurse isn't sad; she's just incredibly tired after rushing back from Romeo. The poor woman's been run ragged by her errands:
I am aweary. Give me leave awhile. Fie, how my bones ache! What a jaunt have I!
Juliet, however, is too young to understand; she's more concerned with what news the Nurse has brought than her poor, aching bones:
I would thou hadst my bones and I thy news. Nay, come, I pray thee, speak. Good, good Nurse, speak.
The Nurse, though out of breath, is still able to speak and yet still won't reveal what Romeo said. This makes Juliet all the more impatient, and for the first time in the scene, we can perhaps start to sympathize with her:
How art thou out of breath when thou hast breath To say to me that thou art out of breath? The excuse that thou dost make in this delay Is longer than the tale thou dost excuse. Is thy news good, or bad? Answer to that. Say either, and I’ll stay the circumstance. Let me be satisfied. Is ’t good or bad?
The Nurse doesn't really need to say anything; Romeo himself can say what he needs to say to Juliet in person. She instructs Juliet to go to Friar Lawrence's cell, where a certain special someone is waiting for her. A wedding ceremony awaits, and Juliet is as impatient to get there as she was to hear the Nurse's news:
Hie to high fortune! Honest Nurse, farewell.
No comments:
Post a Comment