Enter NURSE.

NURSE            O holy Friar, O tell me, holy Friar,

                        Where’s my lady’s lord? where’s Romeo?

FRIAR              There on the ground, with his own tears made drunk.

NURSE            O he is even in my mistress’ case,

                        Just in her case. O woeful sympathy!

                        Piteous predicament! even so lies she,

                        Blubb’ring and weeping, weeping and blubb’ring.

                        Stand up, stand up, stand, and you be a man;

                        For Juliet’s sake, for her sake, rise and stand;

                        Why should you fall into so deep an O? (3.3.81-90)

It’s a useful note for Romeo, with his own tears made drunk; he’s huddled on the ground, incoherent, unreasonable; the Friar’s words are just slightly contemptuous in their frustration. The Nurse’s arrival does lighten the mood, a little, by diluting the intensity of the interactions (three people speaking rather than two), by being a character who, unlike the Friar, is strongly associated with comedy, and, in her speech (as we have come to expect) through the wildly bawdy puns in the repeated case, her case (repeated – in case – we missed it the first time), the exhortation to stand up, stand up, stand up, rise and stand (if you’re a man, prove it through both your actions and your sexual potency), and even the so deep an O (compare the spirit raised in the mistress’s circle invoked so long ago by Mercutio). Although we might want to overlook, or downplay, the sexual references in this context, they’re another aspect of the physicality, the bodily conceits that both Juliet and Romeo have themselves employed, the language of torture and wounding. And – even more – they’re a reminder that one of the things at stake here is sexual, the consummation of the marriage, and hence the release of the sexual energy which has been one of the play’s most intense and urgent drives since the beginning of 1.1. Romeo is not in this terrible state simply because he’s sexually frustrated, but sex and death are inseparable in this play, and the Nurse is here not to save Romeo’s life (that’s what the Friar has been trying to do) but to enable him to comfort Juliet, to consummate their marriage, to salvage something vital, joyous, from this disastrous mess. Just as the two scenes here form a pair, so the Nurse (characteristically) repeats herself, as she says that Romeo and Juliet are doing exactly the same thing, mirroring each other’s actions. Blubb’ring and weeping, weeping and blubb’ring: she even employs a chiasmus to make her point.