SOURCE: Toole, William B. “The Nurse's ‘Vast Irrelevance’: Thematic Foreshadowing in Romeo and Juliet.” South Atlantic Bulletin 45, no. 1 (January 1980): 21-30.

In the following essay, Toole studies the character of the Nurse through an analysis of her speech about Juliet's childhood.

One of the most fascinating aspects of Shakespeare's dramatic artistry lies in his ability to create minor characters whose highly individualistic manner of speech can on occasion be true to their personalities and at the same time point the audience indirectly in one way or another to something crucial in the experience of the central characters of the drama. A particularly brilliant illustration of this technique may be found in the Nurse's digression on Juliet's infancy in I, iii, 23-48. The digression vividly establishes the mind and character of the Nurse as it foreshadows a theme close to the heart of the play: growth through adversity. To appreciate...