Romeo and Juliet: Act 2, Scene 5 – Analysis
Scene Profile – At a Glance
- Location: Capulet's orchard.
- What Happens: Juliet waits impatiently for the Nurse to bring word from Romeo. When the Nurse finally returns, she teases and stalls, complaining of her aching bones, before at last revealing the plan: Juliet is to go to Friar Laurence's cell that afternoon to be married.
- Key Characters: Juliet, the Nurse.
- Dramatic Function: A comic interlude of waiting that delivers the wedding arrangement – setting up the marriage in Act 2, Scene 6 while dramatising the play's gap between breathless youth and slow old age.
- Famous Quote:
"Love's heralds should be thoughts,
Which ten times faster glide than the sun's beams..."
(Act 2, Scene 5) - Why It Matters: The scene sets youthful impatience against age and delay, and confirms the secret marriage that will drive the rest of the tragedy.
Scene Summary
In Capulet's orchard, Juliet waits alone for the Nurse, whom she sent to Romeo three hours earlier. She frets at the delay, imagining how a younger, warmer messenger would have flown back to her by now, and grows more anxious with every passing minute.
At last the Nurse arrives with her servant Peter, but she is in no hurry to share her news. Worn out and teasing, she sends Peter away, complains of her aching bones, her headache and her sore back, and keeps changing the subject – asking whether Juliet has eaten, praising Romeo's looks, demanding to know where Juliet's mother is – until Juliet is almost frantic with frustration.
Finally the Nurse relents and delivers the message: Juliet is to hurry to Friar Laurence's cell, where Romeo waits to marry her, while the Nurse fetches a rope ladder so that Romeo can climb to Juliet's chamber that night. Juliet rushes off joyfully to her wedding.
Juliet's Impatient Waiting
The scene opens with Juliet alone, counting the minutes. She sent the Nurse at nine and was promised her back within half an hour; three hours have passed. Her soliloquy is one of the play's clearest pictures of young love's impatience – every second of delay is agony.
Original
O, she is lame! Love's heralds should be thoughts,
Which ten times faster glide than the sun's beams...
(Act 2, Scene 5)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Oh, she's so slow! Love's news should be like thoughts
That fly ten times as fast as sunbeams fly...
Juliet wishes love's messages could travel as fast as thought itself, faster than sunlight. The imagery is restless and aerial – doves drawing the chariot of love, Cupid's swift wings, a tennis ball bandied back and forth – all of it built on speed, because speed is what she craves. This is the play's theme of time and haste made personal: for Juliet, an hour of waiting stretches into something unbearable. Her impatience is touching and a little comic, but it also belongs to the same headlong rush that has carried the lovers from a first meeting to a secret wedding in a single day.
The Nurse Withholds the News
When the Nurse finally returns, the scene tips into comedy. She has the news Juliet is desperate for, and she knows it – so she takes her time, teasing the girl by complaining about her body and refusing to come to the point.
Original
Jesu, what haste? Can you not stay awhile?
Do you not see that I am out of breath?
(Act 2, Scene 5)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Jesus, what is the rush? Can you not wait?
Can you not see that I am out of breath?
The contrast between the two women is the heart of the scene. Juliet speaks in quick, eager verse; the Nurse drops into rambling, self-pitying prose about her aching bones, her throbbing head, her bad back. She praises Romeo's looks at length, then breaks off to ask whether Juliet has dined, then demands to know where her mother is – anything but the answer Juliet wants. It is the generational gap of youth versus age turned into pure stagecraft: the breathless young lover and the slow, earthy old servant, each living at a completely different speed. The Nurse's teasing is affectionate, but it stretches Juliet's patience to breaking point – and ours with it, which is exactly the joke.
The Marriage Revealed
At last, having wrung every drop of comedy from the delay, the Nurse delivers the message. The teasing drops away and she becomes brisk and practical, sending Juliet off to be married and turning to her own part in the plan.
Original
Then hie you hence to Friar Laurence' cell;
There stays a husband to make you a wife:
(Act 2, Scene 5)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Then hurry on to Friar Laurence's cell;
A husband's waiting there; you'll be his wife.
The plan is set in motion: Juliet is to go to Friar Laurence's cell for the wedding, while the Nurse fetches a rope ladder so that Romeo can climb to her chamber once it is dark. With this speech the comic interlude turns out to have been doing serious plot work all along: it confirms the secret marriage and looks forward to the wedding night. The Nurse's parting lines turn bawdy – she imagines Juliet's cheeks reddening and the "burden" she will bear at night – the same earthy, physical view of love she has carried throughout the play. Juliet, untouched by the teasing now, rushes away to her good fortune.
Language and Technique
- Soliloquy: Juliet's opening speech lets us hear her impatience directly, alone on stage, so we feel every minute of the delay with her.
- Verse versus prose: Juliet speaks in quick, urgent verse while the Nurse rambles in earthy prose – the difference in their speech mirrors the gulf between youth and age.
- Imagery of speed: Thoughts, sunbeams, doves, Cupid's wings and a bandied ball all picture love's messages as fast-moving, underlining Juliet's craving for haste.
- Comic delay: The Nurse withholds her news by changing the subject and listing her aches, building frustration in both Juliet and the audience.
- Bawdy humour: The Nurse's closing lines about blushing cheeks and the night's "burden" give her usual physical, down-to-earth take on love and marriage.
Key Quotes from Act 2, Scene 5
Quote 1Had she affections and warm youthful blood,
She would be as swift in motion as a ball;
(Act 2, Scene 5)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
If she was so in love and she were young,
She'd travel swiftly as a tennis ball;
The excuse that thou dost make in this delay
Is longer than the tale thou dost excuse.
(Act 2, Scene 5)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
The excuse that you are using in delaying
Is longer than the news that you're excusing.
I am the drudge and toil in your delight,
But you shall bear the burden soon at night.
(Act 2, Scene 5)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
I'll do the drudge work, all for your delight,
But you'll soon do a lady's work tonight.
Key Takeaways
- Impatient youth: Juliet's opening soliloquy captures young love's craving for speed, every minute of waiting an agony.
- Comic contrast: The eager young lover and the slow, teasing old Nurse embody the play's clash of youth and age.
- The Nurse withholds: She delays the news with complaints and digressions, frustrating Juliet for pure comic effect.
- The wedding is set: The Nurse finally reveals the plan – Juliet is to marry Romeo at Friar Laurence's cell that afternoon.
Study Questions and Analysis
What does Juliet's opening soliloquy show about her state of mind?
Juliet's soliloquy is a study in impatience. She sent the Nurse at nine and was promised her back within half an hour, and now three hours have crawled by. Alone on stage, she pours out her frustration in images of speed: love's messages should travel faster than sunlight, drawn by doves and carried on Cupid's wings.
Now is the sun upon the highmost hill
Of this day's journey, and from nine till twelve...
(Act 2, Scene 5)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
The sun's now at its highpoint in the sky
Of this day's journey, and from nine till twelve...
Coppélia Kahn, in Man's Estate: Masculine Identity in Shakespeare (1981), reads the play's young people as caught in a desperate rush against the slow, controlling world of their elders, and Juliet here is the clearest case: every measure of time – the striking clock, the climbing sun – presses on her. The speech is also gently comic. Juliet's certainty that a younger messenger would have flown back to her, and that "old folks" merely "feign as they were dead", is about to be confirmed in the funniest possible way when the Nurse arrives and refuses to move at any speed at all. Beneath the comedy, though, the soliloquy shows a young woman whose feelings are wholly serious, living at the breakneck pace the whole play sets for its lovers.
How does the Nurse create comedy in this scene?
The Nurse's comedy comes from delay. She returns with exactly the news Juliet is desperate to hear, and instead of delivering it she stalls – pleading exhaustion, cataloguing her aches, and repeatedly changing the subject. She complains of her bones, her head and her back, praises Romeo's body, breaks off to ask whether Juliet has eaten, and demands to know where Juliet's mother is, all while Juliet grows frantic.
Harley Granville-Barker, in his Prefaces to Shakespeare (1930), admired the Nurse as one of Shakespeare's great comic creations, a figure of rambling, earthy realism set against the lovers' lyricism. The humour here is rooted in character: the Nurse genuinely is old, slow and physically uncomfortable, so her stalling is both a tease and a true picture of age. The audience is made to share Juliet's impatience, which is the cleverness of the writing – the longer the Nurse withholds her news, the funnier and the more excruciating the wait becomes. It is comic timing built entirely out of the gap between what one character wants and how slowly another will give it.
How does the scene develop the theme of youth versus age?
The whole scene is built on the contrast between young and old. Juliet is all speed and urgency; the Nurse is all slowness and complaint. Their very speech divides along the same line: Juliet speaks in quick, eager verse, while the Nurse rambles in earthy prose about her body and her errands. Even Juliet's frustration is framed as a comment on age – she imagines that a young messenger, with "warm youthful blood", would have raced back, while "old folks" move "heavy and pale as lead".
The scene therefore dramatises in miniature one of the play's running tensions, the theme of youth versus age. The young want everything now; the old move at their own pace and cannot be hurried. Critics have long noted that the tragedy partly turns on this mismatch – the lovers' headlong speed against the slowness and miscommunication of the adults around them. Here the clash is played for laughs, but the same gap, later in the play, will prove fatal when messages arrive too slowly to save them.
Why is this short comic scene important to the plot?
For all its comedy, the scene does essential plot work. Hidden inside the Nurse's teasing is the news that sets up the secret marriage: Juliet is to go straight to Friar Laurence's cell to be wed to Romeo that afternoon, and the Nurse will fetch a rope ladder so that Romeo can climb to her chamber that night.
Hie you to church; I must another way,
To fetch a ladder, by the which your love...
(Act 2, Scene 5)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Now, hurry to the church; I must go elsewhere
To fetch a ladder, which your love will use...
The scene thus advances the action towards the wedding of Act 2, Scene 6 and the consummation that follows. Placing this information inside a comic interlude is a deliberate piece of structure: the laughter lightens the play just before its happiest moment, the marriage, after which the tragedy darkens sharply. The scene is also our last sustained glimpse of the Nurse as an unreserved ally of the lovers; her active help here – carrying messages, fetching the ladder – makes her later failure to stand by Juliet all the more painful.
What does the scene reveal about the relationship between Juliet and the Nurse?
The scene shows a relationship that is warm, intimate and unequal in an interesting way. The Nurse, who raised Juliet from infancy, treats her with the teasing familiarity of a mother or grandmother rather than a servant – she feels free to withhold news, to scold, to make bawdy jokes, and to milk the moment for her own amusement. Juliet, for her part, coaxes and flatters her, calling her "good sweet nurse" and "honey nurse", but also snaps with real exasperation when the teasing goes too far.
Coppélia Kahn (1981) notes how far the Nurse stands in for the absent warmth of Juliet's actual mother, Lady Capulet, who is cold and formal with her daughter. It is to the Nurse, not her mother, that Juliet turns at the most important moment of her life. That closeness is exactly what makes the Nurse's later betrayal – when she advises Juliet to forget Romeo and marry Paris – so wounding. Here, though, the bond is at its happiest: two people who love each other, one teasing and one pleading, over the best news Juliet will ever receive.
