NURSE                                    God forgive me!

                        Marry and amen! How sound is she asleep!

                        I needs must wake her. Madam, madam, madam!

                        Ay, let the County take you in your bed,

                        He’ll fright you up, i’faith. Will it not be?

                        [Draws back the curtains.]

                        What, dressed, and in your clothes, and down again?

                        I must needs wake you. Lady, lady, lady!

                        Alas, alas! Help, help! my lady’s dead!

                        O weraday that ever I was born!

                        Some aqua-vitae, ho! My lord! My lady! (4.5.7-16)

Here, at least, is the answer to my oft-pondered question, what is Juliet wearing? She’s wearing what she was in the previous scene, dressed, and in her clothes – what she wore to see the Friar – she hasn’t changed into shift/bed-gown as I’d suggested; she will have to have composed herself – and her gown – carefully after taking the potion and falling on to the bed. (Or is that worrying too much about realism?) If she is fully dressed, apparently dead on her bed, then she will already look strikingly like a tomb effigy, in formal attire, especially if she’s lying on her back. The stage direction is editorial but strongly suggested by the following line: the Nurse will have had to draw the bed-curtains in order to observe that Juliet is indeed fully dressed.

So the Nurse here does immediately reproach herself for her rather off-colour suggestion to Juliet, that she get what sleep she can, only to make another similar comment: let the County take you in your bed, he’ll fright you up. Take here is find or surprise, but also has a sexual sense (unsurprisingly); fright you up is depressingly pessimistic about sexual experience… The extended way in which this scene begins ramps up the tension, and it does have a kind of domestic realism to it: the Nurse rambling on, being a bit inappropriate, not really listening to any answers that might be made by the person she’s talking to, just getting on with the morning routine, not looking at the bed. And then she gets a little disconcerted. Opens the curtains. What’s this? Touches Juliet’s cheek? Shakes her? Then all those repetitions – madam, madam, madam; lady, lady, lady– become the repetitions of consternation, panic, lamentation: alas, alas! help, help! Weraday is also an expression of lamentation, and the ritual, repetitive expression of mourning and lament will dominate the rest of the scene. Confirmation – the drug has worked: my lady’s dead! (but has it worked too well? do we worry about that, that she might really be dead?) And – having first called for a drink (and fair enough) the Nurse calls for Juliet’s parents…