In Act 1,
Scene 3, onethe nurse speaks is found in the line the Nurse quotes her husband as saying towhen
she was a toddler, "'Yea,' quoth he, 'dost thou fall upon thy face? Thou wilt fall backward
when thou has more wit." The pun is a sexual innuendo making a double meaning of the phrase
"fall backward." Fall backward can literally refer to
falling, as baby Juliet just did, or it can be interpreted with sexual
connotations.
A second pun can be found in the line referring to the bruise
on baby Juliet's face after falling, "a parlous knock," meaning a "perilous
knock." The term knock can refer to a hit or blow, but it can
also have sexual connotations that the slang term "knocked up" comes
from.
A third pun can be found in Nurse's response to 's advice that Juliet
open herself up to getting to know : "by having him, making yourself no less," Nurse
responds with, "No less! nay, bigger; women grow by men." The pun is a play on the
word grow. Lady Capulet is using
less as afor Juliet getting to know Paris, but Nurse uses the paraodx with
grow as a pun with sexual reference. She is using grow
to refer to growing in pregnancy.
Thursday, 9 February 2017
In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, what are some puns said by the Nurse in Act I?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
In 1984, is Julia a spy? Please provide specific examples from the book. My teacher says that he knows of 17 pieces of evidence which proves that Julia...
There is some evidence to suggest thatwas a spy throughout 's classic novel . Julia portrays herself as a loyal admirer of Big ...
-
A central theme of "" is that of age: in this poem, we don't encounter the hero of The Iliad and The Odyssey . Rather...
-
Daryll Delgado's short story "Preludes" is full of ambiguities and uncertainties. Delgado deliberately leaves the read...
-
A native of the west, the speaker is well familiar with the climate and environment in his homeland when the west wind begins to blo...
No comments:
Post a Comment