Enter CAPULET’S WIFE and NURSE
LADY CAPULET Nurse, where’s my daughter? call her forth to me.
NURSE Now by my maidenhead at twelve year old,
I bade her come. What, lamb! What, ladybird
God forbid, where’s this girl? What, Juliet!
Enter JULIET
JULIET How now, who calls?
NURSE Your mother.
JULIET Madam, I am here, what is your will? (1.3.1-7)
This is the first shift of location in the play; there’s no indication of it as such, but this conversation is clearly taking place in a domestic interior, in the Capulet house. The Nurse and Lady Capulet might enter from opposite doors; they might come in and sit down, either on chairs placed for them (which would establish the interior) or stools (which they could carry with them). (They might sit and sew, but that’s another project: see my recent essay on putative sewing scenes, Shakespeare Survey 70 (may need institutional access, sorry).) What matters is that there’s – apparently – a shift of tone as well as a shift of location, to the domestic, the familial, the feminine.
Lady Capulet is formal, peremptory; there’s perhaps a suggestion that she’s asked already for Juliet to be summoned, as the Nurse’s reply confirms, I bade her come. Juliet’s entrance, so long anticipated, is delayed just a few lines longer, for maximum impact, allowing the Nurse not only to make the first of her many bawdy comments in the scene, but also to frame Juliet, as she appears, in terms of youth and liveliness. Twelve year old doesn’t quite describe Juliet (thank goodness), but it establishes a marker of extreme youth. Lamb and ladybird are affectionate; they’re also nature-based and quick-moving (we have to imagine leaping spring lambs as well as cuddly or indeed sacrificial ones), and the vivid colour and whirring flight of the ladybird. (Which can also mean prostitute, but surely doesn’t have to here.) (Paralleling his sensitive staging of Romeo’s entrance, Zeffirelli gives emphasis to Juliet’s youth and vitality through her theme music, and in particular a swift panning shot up several levels of the inner courtyard of the house, as she appears at a window to answer the Nurse.)
How now is informal, establishing the intimacy of Juliet’s relationship with the Nurse, a stark contrast to her formal greeting of her mother, Madam, I am here. Children in the period were more formal in at least some of their interactions with their parents: it’s not impossible that Juliet might kneel before her mother when she enters, and she would certainly curtsey; if the Nurse and Lady Capulet are seated, then she will remain standing throughout the scene, giving her the opportunity to continue as a thing in motion – a bit fidgety? – in comparison with the stasis of the older women.
What is your will? is an entirely normal response; what do you want, what can I do for you? but it’s particularly resonant here: Capulet has already spoken of his will in relation to Juliet during his conversation with Paris in the previous scene, where he hedged it around with consent, choice, and voice. Juliet’s discernment, and articulation, of her own will will mark her alienation from her family, but here she is the obedient daughter, waiting to be told what her mother wants from, and for, her.
