Another point relating to yesterday's post (regarding the way time is perceived in the adult world versus the idealized one of the young lovers) is the manner in which the Nurse derives her knowledge of Juliet. She makes a very big deal of the fact that she knows exactly how old Juliet is ("Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour") and that she can tell stories of her very young days (and particularly the endlessly repeated one of how Juliet responded unknowingly to an off-colour question by her late husband), as if things of this nature are all that knowledge of a younger person entails. And over the course of the play, as Juliet grows to inner maturity, it becomes apparent that the Nurse doesn't know her at all. The final break comes, of course, when she recommends to Juliet to forget her marriage to the banished Romeo and marry Paris. It's a remarkable scene:

NURSE

Beshrew my very heart,

I think you are happy in this second match,

For it excels your first: or if it did not,

Your first is dead; or 'twere as good he were,

As living here and you no use of him.

JULIET

Speakest thou from thy heart?

NURSE

And from my soul too;

Or else beshrew them both.

JULIET

Amen!

NURSE

What?

JULIET

Well, thou hast comforted me marvellous much.

Go in: and tell my lady I am gone,

Having displeased my father, to Laurence' cell,

To make confession and to be absolved.

NURSE

Marry, I will; and this is wisely done.

[Exit]

JULIET

Ancient damnation! O most wicked fiend!

Is it more sin to wish me thus forsworn,

Or to dispraise my lord with that same tongue

Which she hath praised him with above compare

So many thousand times? Go, counsellor;

Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain.

I'll to the friar, to know his remedy:

If all else fail, myself have power to die.

It's another example of the truth in Robert Penn Warren's statement: "All of Shakespeare's villains are rationalists".