Romeo and Juliet: Katherine Cornell as Juliet and Edith Evans as the Nurse. 1934.

Although they had toured with this play, Cornell and her husband Guthrie McClintic decided to open Romeo and Juliet in New York with a new production with just a few actors from the tour. Orson Welles played Tybalt instead of Mercutio, making his Broadway debut. Maurice Evans played Romeo, and Ralph Richardson Mercutio, and Edith Evans played the Nurse, above. Chaucer's Wife of Bath illustrates a major character stereotype in amatory literature, such as the Roman de la Rose: the crone, often with magical powers, particularly in sexual matters. Shakespeare's nurse in Romeo and Juliet is in this tradition. The Wife's tale, about an amoral aristocrat whose reluctance as a bridegroom is overcome by wifely finesse, is similar in character to the plot of Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well.