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Romeo And Juliet Foil Analysis

Decent Essays

In Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, he uses foils to further isolate key aspects in a main character’s personality. He has three examples of this literary element: Romeo and Mercutio; Tybalt and Benvolio; and the Nurse and Lady Capulet. The curt, imperious Lady Capulet and her foil, the somewhat crude, suggestive Nurse, are the topics of this paper. Lady Capulet is very different from her foil in many ways, but they are also similar in some ways. Their similarities and some of their differences are mostly related to Juliet, a girl in which they both love. Lady Capulet and the Nurses’ first difference is their age. Lady Capulet is a young mother. Lady Capulet proves this true during a conversation with Juliet about marriage: “By my count/ I was your mother much upon these years/ That you are now a maid.” (1.3. 71-73). Because Juliet is turning fourteen, this shows that Lady Capulet conceived Juliet around the age of fourteen which would make her approximately twenty-eight years old. Conversely, the Nurse, whose name was never mentioned, was portrayed as elderly. Sarah Carter describes the Nurse as “an earthy, bawdy older …show more content…

The nurses’ daughter died when the girls were both three-years-old. The nurse shares this information during her monologue: “Susan and she (God rest all Christian souls!)/ Were of an age. Well Susan is with God;” (1.3. 18-19). The death of Susan can be inferred for the cause of the Nurse’s “close relationship with Juliet” (Carter), which is a contrast to Lady Capulet’s relationship with Juliet. Both women obviously care for Juliet, but they show it differently. The nurse was always sympathetic to Juliet’s love for Romeo: “Hie to your chamber. I’ll find Romeo/ To comfort you. I wotwell where he is.” (3.2. 138-139). Lady Capulet was “unsympathetic to her daughter's qualms” (Boyce). This is also shown after Lord Capulet tells Juliet that she has to marry

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