Join Bryn Boice (CSC’s Associate Artistic Director) in this monthly podcast, as she breaks down and shakes down Shakespeare’s most interesting speeches, from the most famous to the most obscure. This month, she explores the Nurse and Juliet scene from Romeo and Juliet, with actress Paula Plum from Actors’ Shakespeare Project! Flip through the pages of the Folio with her and see what treasures there are to uncover!
About ASP’s Romeo and Juliet: actorsshakespeareproject.org/romeo-and-juliet/
JULIET
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.
NURSE
I am a-weary, give me leave awhile:
Fie, how my bones ache! what a jaunt have I had!
JULIET
I would thou hadst my bones, and I thy news:
Nay, come, I pray thee, speak; good, good nurse, speak.
NURSE
Jesu, what haste? can you not stay awhile?
Do you not see that I am out of breath?
JULIET
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?
NURSE
Well, you have made a simple choice; you know not
how to choose a man: Romeo! no, not he; 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 talked on, yet they are
past compare: he is not the flower of courtesy,
but, I’ll warrant him, as gentle as a lamb. Go thy
ways, wench; serve God. What, have you dined at home?
JULIET
No, no: but all this did I know before.
What says he of our marriage? what of that?
NURSE
Lord, how my head aches! what a head have I!
It beats as it would fall in twenty pieces.
My back o’ t’ other side,—O, my back, my back!
Beshrew your heart for sending me about,
To catch my death with jaunting up and down!
JULIET
I’ faith, I am sorry that thou art not well.
Sweet, sweet, sweet nurse, tell me, what says my love?
NURSE
Your love says, like an honest gentleman, and a
courteous, and a kind, and a handsome, and, I
warrant, a virtuous,—Where is your mother?
JULIET
Where is my mother! why, she is within;
Where should she be? How oddly thou repliest!
‘Your love says, like an honest gentleman,
Where is your mother?’
NURSE
O God’s lady dear!
Are you so hot? marry, come up, I trow;
Is this the poultice for my aching bones?
Henceforward do your messages yourself.
JULIET
Here’s such a coil! come, what says Romeo?
NURSE
Have you got leave to go to shrift to-day?
JULIET
I have.
NURSE
Then hie you hence to Friar Laurence’ cell;
There stays a husband to make you a wife:
Now comes the wanton blood up in your cheeks,
They’ll be in scarlet straight at any news.
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.
Go; I’ll to dinner: hie you to the cell.
JULIET
Hie to high fortune! Honest nurse, farewell.
