A To Z Challenge 2022: Shakespeare - N Is For Nerissa and Nurse

 

Juliet And Her Nurse: Henry Perronet  Briggs. Public Domain

Today’s characters have names starting with N. They aren’t the lead characters in their plays, but are interesting anyway!

N is for Nerissa. Nerissa is the gentlewoman who serves Portia, the young woman who marries Bassanio in The Merchant Of Venice and rescues Antonio, who was in danger of having a pound of flesh taken from him. Nerissa isn’t just a standard nameless servant. Like Charmian and Iras(Antony and Cleopatra), Maria(Twelfth Night) and Margaret and Ursula(Much Ado About Nothing), she has more of a role to play. Nerissa supports her mistress and joins her in disguising as a man to go to court, with Portia as a lawyer and Nerissa as a law clerk. She has agreed to marry Gratiano, one of Antonio’s friends. She hears the idiot swear he would rather have her dead than Antonio lose his case, and squeezes out of him the ring she gave him as herself. In the last scene she yells at him, but we know he is going to pay for it for the rest of their lives...

The Nurse from Romeo And Juliet is a character whose actual name we never learn, though we do know she had a daughter called Susan, now dead. Nurse starts the play with some crude comments, remembering when her husband made a joke about little Juliet falling on her face, but she would fall on her back when she was older and smarter, ha ha.

There is no question that the Nurse loves Juliet dearly, and gives her support in marrying Romeo. However, I can’t help thinking she likes the romance of her little girl falling in love and getting married. She doesn’t really care who it is. 

The day after the Capulet party where the young lovers meet, the Nurse goes out to find Romeo to make arrangements for the wedding. Having successfully done that, she returns to the Capulet house, teasing Juliet before telling her the good news. 

But here is the thing, and the reason why I think the Nurse doesn’t really care who Juliet marries. When Romeo has killed Tybalt and the lovers have had their wedding night, Lord Capulet has decided it might cheer up his daughter if she marries Paris, a young man who wanted to marry her early in the play. Juliet gets upset instead, not only because she loves Romeo, but because they are married, dammit, and he has gone into exile and she can’t get in touch with him. 

And what does the Nurse say, knowing Juliet is Mrs Montague? That she, the Nurse, even organised it? She urges Juliet to marry that “lovely gentleman” Paris. After all, when is she ever going to see Romeo again? 

So, at the very time when Juliet needs support, her nurse abandons her. No doubt she thinks it’s for the best, but still, she has abandoned her girl. I do wonder what she feels after the play is over and Juliet's dead?

In the Baz Luhrmann modern dress film, with Leonardo Di Caprio and Claire Danes, the Nurse was played as a Latina by British actress Miriam Margolyes. 

In West Side Story, the musical inspired by Romeo And Juliet, the Nurse character is Maria’s(Juliet’s) brother’s fiancée, Anita, who leads a group of Puerto Rican girls in the lively song and dance America.

A very different interpretation! 

See you Monday for O Is For Oberon and Olivia!