Romeo & Juliet - Act 4 Scene 3
The Nurse never speaks in this scene, though she presumably is helping Juliet select and lay out her wedding clothes. Since she knows about Romeo, the Nurse may have suspicions, or she may be taken in by Juliet's pretense.
Juliet's chamber.
Enter JULIET and Nurse
JULIET
Ay, those attires are best; but, gentle Nurse,
I pray thee, leave me to my self tonight,
For I have need of many orisons
To move the heavens to smile upon my state,
Which, well thou know'st, is cross, and full of sin.
Enter LADY CAPULET
LADY CAPULET
What, are you busy, ho? Need you my help?
While Juliet's response to her mother is polite, it can also come off as cold and distant. "Madam" is a particularly formal way to address her mother in what ought to be a warm and intimate moment, a mother's conversation with her daughter on the night before her wedding.
JULIET
No, madam; we have culled such necessaries
As are behoveful for our state tomorrow.
So please you, let me now be left alone,
And let the Nurse this night sit up with you;
For, I am sure, you have your hands full all,
In this so sudden business.
LADY CAPULET
Good night.
Get thee to bed, and rest; for thou hast need.
Exeunt LADY CAPULET and Nurse
Juliet has been utterly willing to die earlier, in moments of passion. Now she must face the possibility alone, and in quiet contemplation, which makes the reality of death all the more chilling.
JULIET
Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again.
I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins,
That almost freezes up the heat of life.
I'll call them back again to comfort me.
Nurse! What should she do here?
My dismal scene I needs must act alone.
Come, vial.
What if this mixture do not work at all?
Shall I be married then tomorrow morning?
No, no: this shall forbid it; lie thou there.
The dagger can be troublesome in performance: there's no obvious moment for Juliet to pick it up again, but it isn't remarked upon by anyone later, and it's not present later at the tomb. Juliet may hide it away, or it may conveniently "vanish" between scenes.
Juliet's considerations raise possibilities for the audience as well. For all we know, the potion may indeed turn out to be poison, or Juliet may wake up in the tomb and go mad.
In original stagings of this play, the curtained-off bed may have been visible during the next scene, heightening the dramatic irony and suspense.
Laying down her dagger
What if it be a poison, which the Friar
Subtly hath ministered to have me dead,
Lest in this marriage he should be dishonoured,
Because he married me before to Romeo?
I fear it is; and yet, methinks, it should not,
For he hath still been tried a holy man.
How if, when I am laid into the tomb,
I wake before the time that Romeo
Come to redeem me? There's a fearful point!
Shall I not, then, be stifled in the vault,
To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,
And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?
Or, if I live, is it not very like,
The horrible conceit of death and night,
Together with the terror of the place,
As in a vault, an ancient receptacle,
Where, for these many hundred years, the bones
Of all my buried ancestors are packed;
Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,
Lies festering in his shroud; where, as they say,
At some hours in the night spirits resort;
Alack, alack, is it not like that I,
So early waking, what with loathsome smells,
And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth,
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad –
O, if I wake, shall I not be distraught,
Environèd with all these hideous fears?
And madly play with my forefather's joints?
And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud?
And, in this rage, with some great kinsman's bone,
As with a club, dash out my desperate brains?
O, look! Methinks I see my cousin's ghost
Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body
Upon a rapier's point; stay, Tybalt, stay!
Romeo, I come! This do I drink to thee.
[She drinks] She falls upon her bed, within the curtains