Romeo and Juliet The Nurse Quotes

The Nurse

Quote 1

NURSE
Hie you to church. I must another way,
To fetch a ladder, by the which your love
Must climb a bird's nest soon when it is dark.
I am the drudge and toil in your delight,
But you shall bear the burden soon at night.
(2.5.77-81)

The Nurse says she'll "fetch a ladder" for Romeo to climb up so the lovers can spend their wedding night together, managing to turn her description of Romeo "climbing" the ladder into Juliet's "bird's nest" into an image of the kind of sex the couple is going to have later that night: Juliet will "bear the burden" of Romeo. (This is a lot creepier when you remember that the Nurse has practically raised Juliet.)

NURSE
She's dead, deceased. She's dead, alack the day!
LADY CAPULET
Alack the day, she's dead, she's dead, she's dead.
CAPULET
Ha! let me see her! Out, alas, she's cold.
Her blood is settled, and her joints are stiff.
Life and these lips have long been separated.
Death lies on her like an untimely frost
Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.
NURSE
O lamentable day!
LADY CAPULET
                              O woeful time!
CAPULET
Death, that hath ta'en her hence to make me wail,
Ties up my tongue and will not let me speak.
(4.5.28-38)

Juliet's family tries to describe her death in gentle terms – "an untimely frost" – to make her loss less horrific to them.

The Nurse > Juliet

Quote 3

NURSE
Ah, weraday, he's dead, he's dead, he's dead!
We are undone, lady, we are undone.
Alack the day, he's gone, he's kill'd, he's dead.
JULIET
Can heaven be so envious?
NURSE
Romeo can,
Though heaven cannot. O Romeo, Romeo,
Who ever would have thought it? Romeo!
JULIET
What devil art thou, that dost torment me thus?
This torture should be roared in dismal hell.
Hath Romeo slain himself? Say thou but 'Ay,'
And that bare vowel 'I' shall poison more
Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice.
I am not I, if there be such an 'I,'
Or those eyes shut that make thee answer 'Ay.'
If he be slain, say 'Ay,' or if not, "No."
Brief sounds determine of my weal or woe.
NURSE
I saw the wound, I saw it with mine eyes
(God save the mark!) here on his manly breast—
A piteous corse, a bloody piteous corse,
Pale, pale as ashes, all bedaubed in blood,
All in gore blood. I swoonèd at the sight.
JULIET
O, break, my heart, poor bankrupt, break at once!
To prison, eyes; ne'er look on liberty.
Vile earth, to earth resign; end motion here,
And thou and Romeo press one heavy bier.
(3.2.42-66)

Without Romeo, Juliet thinks her only option is death. She is no longer herself without him.