JULIET Ay me, what news? Why dost thou wring thy hands?
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 killed, 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! (3.2.36-42)
That the Nurse is both copious and vague in what she has to say is no surprise, and one of the purposes of the earlier scene, when she teased Juliet with her delay in relaying the news from Romeo is now apparent: there’s the same dilatoriness here, but no playfulness. We know what’s happened, although for an awful moment we might, with Juliet, imagine that the Nurse is talking about Romeo, but mostly it’s a very clever use of the audience’s privileged knowledge: we might feel guilty that we know what Juliet doesn’t, and we can focus closely on her dawning realisation as she works out, eventually, what the Nurse is talking about. But, at first, we also have to forget what we know – that it’s Tybalt who’s dead, and Romeo who has killed him, and that Romeo still lives – and watch Juliet as her world falls apart. So there’s a relationship between the safety of our knowledge and our appreciation of – even our pleasure in – Juliet’s emotional distress. A little model of why tragedy gives pleasure, right there: we know that Romeo isn’t dead, but we can still get a kick out of Juliet’s pain. Juliet knows about irony: can heaven be so envious? can the gods (although she’s implicitly Christian in her reference here) be so unjust as to take Romeo from her? envious mostly means cruel, but also suggests that her good fortune, and Romeo himself, have made the gods jealous, so they’ve taken him away.
Even though it’s the Nurse being her usual unfiltered self, it’s wonderfully calibrated. First of all, the indeterminate he’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead! he’s gone, he’s killed, he’s dead! Who’s he? And is there just one he? because, of course, he’s gone, he’s killed refers to Romeo as much as to Tybalt, although in a different sense. Then all those repeated Romeos– turning the knife, given that this is the name that Juliet has so longed to hear, and like all such passages in the play, inevitably recalling the balcony scene, as well as reminding us, yet again, of the way in which names have become weaponised in this play. And in the Nurse’s repetitions, her wailing, Ah weraday, there’s an anticipation of the later scene of mourning in the play, when the Capulets think that Juliet is dead – which has the same ritual quality, all repetition and ahs and ohs (only more so) – and which contrasts with the intensely dignified and personal way in which Romeo and Juliet will lament each other. But let’s not go there yet…
