Both Friar Laurence and the Nurse help Romeo and Juliet get married. Friar Laurence assists by performing the secret ceremony that allows the pair to hide their union from their family. He also concocts a plan to reunite the pair after Romeo’s exile by providing Juliet with the sleeping potion that wrongly causes Romeo to conclude that Juliet is dead. Similarly, the Nurse assists Romeo and Juliet in a variety of ways, but this assistance also ultimately leads to their respective deaths. Throughout the play, the Nurse acts as an intermediary between Romeo and Juliet. She delivers messages for both and facilitates their secret meetings. So while both the Nurse and Friar Lawrence do, indeed, help Romeo and Juliet get married, this help ironically results in the final tragedy of the play.
Does anybody know the etymology of the phrase "sweet dreams"? I tried googling but did not find anything satisfying. Is this a relatively new phrase of the modern world or has this been in use for some time? I think it's the latter one. Answer The OED has the interjection as "a farewell to someone going to bed" from the 20th century: 1908 Sears Roebuck Catal. 198/1 Tenor Solos..Good Bye, Sweet Dreams, Good Bye. But it goes back until at least the 19th and possibly 18th centuries. John Wolcot, writing under the pseudonym of Peter Pindar, used it in his poem "Orson and Ellen; A Legendary Tale" published in 1801: Also from 1801 in The infernal Quixote (Page 287) by Charles Lucas: In the March 1776 of The Universal Magazine was published "The Serenade. A Pastoral Tale. From the German of Gesner" , where the shepherd Daphnis watches over his beloved as she sleeps and sings: The same tale appears in 1776's as Idyl XI, " Daphnis ...
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