NURSE            Out upon you, what a man are you?

ROMEO           One, gentlewoman, that God hath made, himself to mar.

NURSE            By my troth, it is well said: ‘for himself to mar’, quoth’a? Gentlemen, can any of you tell me where I may find the young Romeo?

ROMEO           I can tell you, but young Romeo will be older when you have found him than he was when you sought him: I am the youngest of that name, for fault of a worse.

NURSE            You say well.

MERCUTIO     Yea, is the worst well? Very well took, i’faith, wisely, wisely.

NURSE            If you be he, I desire some confidence with you. (2.4.94-105)

Romeo is quite polite here, at least initially addressing the Nurse respectfully and formally as gentlewoman. He can’t quite resist the temptation to continue scoring points off Mercutio (he was made by God but is messing things up perfectly well on his own account), and the Nurse might be impressed, or she might be being sarcastic, because making and marring are so often coupled proverbially (as Capulet did when he was talking about Juliet to Paris in 1.2) so it’s not exactly crushingly witty. There’s a slight plot issue here, if we remember that the Nurse explicitly identified Romeo to Juliet at the ball and yet here seems not to recognise him. Is the Nurse stupid? Is she really cunning and just pretending not to know him? It really doesn’t matter, although I do quite like the idea of developing the Nurse’s emotional intelligence, her pragmatism, her common sense – albeit within a narrow range; she has so many blind-spots – as a contrast to the way in which the play (as in this scene) seems to prize quick-wittedness above all else. Romeo’s being a bit smart (to keep up appearances before his friends?) but the emphasis on his name, and on his youth, is important – and the reminder that he has not been new-baptised: he has no other name. Another reminder that, in the world of this play, it is impossible ever to cast off a name, and that names have consequences. And that the clock is always ticking. (Throwaway lines, a jest, but securely woven into the textures of the play.) Mercutio wants to continue the banter, but the Nurse, mostly, remains on task, and she knows that the next bit of the conversation has to take place in private. She is, for the moment, being as formal and restrained as is possible, despite Mercutio’s best efforts.