This final course of events is what ends the “age old grudge” between the two families and proves how powerful love for another person can be, and just how committed Romeo and Juliet are to each other.
I am now going to consider how the parents and parent substitutes of Romeo and Juliet were responsible for the events and what they could have done to prevent what happened. I will start by analysing Juliet’s father, Capulet. Capulet doesn’t know his daughter very well because he hasn’t brought her up, this was done by the Nurse and so he has had very little to do with his daughter while she has been growing up and rarely visits her but sends his wife to give Juliet messages and inform her of his plans. This isolation between Capulet and his daughter means he knows little of her and means that Juliet relies and confides more upon the Nurse, the person who has looked after her and protected her while she has been growing up. The lack of knowledge that Juliet’s father has of her means that what he feels is a suitable match for her is completely wrong however Juliet would have expected her father to arrange her marriage and for her to have little say about the choice of husband.
Capulet portrays himself originally as being a caring father who wants the best for his daughter by trying to delay the marriage of his daughter for a year saying that she is too young to marry,
“But saying o’er what I have said before:
My child is yet a stranger in the world,
She hath not yet seen the change of fourteen years;
Let two more summers wither in their pride,
Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.”
After the killing of Mercutio, the Kinsman of the Prince, by Tybalt Capulet becomes worried about his family name and so in an attempt to reconcile the family name gives his consent to Paris, another kinsman to marry Juliet, without her knowing.
This is where we get the evidence of the barrier between Capulet and his daughter as instead of going to Juliet’s chamber to tell her of the marriage he sends his wife. Juliet then asks her mother to return to Capulet and tell him that she refuses to marry Paris. Capulet’s reaction to Juliet is that of an enraged and very angry man and talks about he will “…drag thee on a hurdle thither” saying that he will take Juliet to church to marry Paris on a frame usually used for taking prisoners to execution. On the next line he continues to insult Juliet by saying “Out, you green-sickness carrion! out, you baggage!” the use of the word “carrion” is very harsh as this means something vile or filthy and shows a contrast in his character to the caring father who tried to delay the marriage a couple of years just a couple of days before, now Capulet is insulting her and threatening to throw her out.
The harsh words used by Capulet would have been used by Shakespeare to build up sympathy for Juliet as she is being cast aside by her father. But she does not give up in trying to resolve her problem she continues to plead with her mother even after Capulet has departed her chamber,
“O sweet my mother, cast me not away!
Delay this marriage for a month, a week,
Or if you do not, make the bridal bed
In that dim monument where Tybalt lies.”
showing how determined Juliet is to try a live ‘happily ever after’ with Romeo that she will kill herself if she is forced to marry Paris.
But Capulet wasn’t the only parent who had little to do Juliet, Lady Capulet was also isolated from her daughter and her upbringing, not what would be expected of a mother nowadays but again this was usual in Shakespeare’s time. Lady Capulet does have little more to do with Juliet however as she visits Juliet in her chamber when instructed to do so by Capulet. It is even the Nurse who has breast fed Juliet when she was young, again something usual in Shakespearean times but would be found very strange nowadays, Lady Capulet finds it hard to tell Juliet of her arranged marriage without the company of the nurse shown in the passage below.
“This is the matter. Nurse, give leave a while,
We must talk in secret. Nurse, come back again,”
As the nurse has had so much to do with the upbringing of Juliet I feel that she is the next most important person to consider. From the play we can see that it is the Nurse who Juliet decides to confide in and not any of her true parents, as shown when Juliet tells her about Romeo. Juliet trusts the nurse enough to send her to meet Romeo to discuss plans. However when Lady Capulet informs Juliet of her marriage to Paris the Nurse quickly sides with her mother even though she previously encouraged and persuaded Juliet’s marriage to Romeo. This leaves Juliet isolated, with nobody to turn to for reassurance, leaving her in a desperate state, desperate enough to consider suicide and she goes to the Friar for an answer. If the nurse had condemned Juliet’s marriage to Romeo then maybe the tragic ending would have been avoided, the nurse could also have been more supportive of Juliet when she was informed about the marriage by trying to offer a solution to Juliet’s predicament, and if she had no ideas of her own that offer to take Juliet to see Friar Lawrence for a answer to the problem, the way the Nurse simply deserted Juliet showed a weakness in her character and led Juliet to becoming more distraught. However the situation may also have been avoided if the nurse had gone behind Juliet’s back and informed Capulet of the secret wedding so that he could have stopped the second wedding and stopped the tragic ending from occurring, this could also have ended the mutany between the households.
Romeo’s family situation is similar to that of Juliet’s with his mother and father again having very little to do with his upbringing and not really knowing Romeo very well as we see in the book that they are slow to notice how heart broken he is by Rosaline and needs to ask Romeo’s friend what the problem is with Romeo. However at this point we can see just how worried Lady Montague is by her son’s distress but doesn’t know how to solve the problem herself and again relies upon Romeo’s friend to try and help. Again though this lack of understanding of their child comes from not being a main part in his upbringing, this again was left to a non family member, Friar Lawrence. In the play we only get to see very little of Romeo’s parents as most of the play are dominated by the Capulet family.
Romeo does have a person who understands him, his tutor and confidante, Friar Lawrence. The Friar notices how upset Romeo is by Rosaline but at first is unsure of Romeo becoming involved with Juliet. Eventually he sees how serious Romeo is about her and how happy she makes him feel. The Friar is still unsure about Juliet and tries to get Romeo to slow things down but with no success, eventually Friar Lawrence gives his consent to marry Romeo and Juliet. At this point the Friar could have stood his ground and refused completely to marry the two, but because he was so close to Romeo he didn’t want to let him down. Maybe in the end the Friar thought that this could end the grudge between the families and this was another reason he consented to marry the two in secret.
“In one respect I’ll thy assistant be:
For this alliance may so happy prove
To turn your households’ rancour to pure love.”
This isn’t the only part of the play where Friar Lawrence plays a big part in the tragic tale; it is Friar Lawrence who gave Juliet the potion which could possibly be the biggest mistake in the play. There are reasons for the Friar giving Juliet this potion to make herself look dead, he knows about the first marriage and so can’t lawfully marry her again and Juliet threatened to stab herself infront of Friar Lawrence in his cell if he did not help her which would have had the same tragic ending as giving her the potion had.
The Friar’s plan seemed fail proof until Capulet decided to bring the wedding day forward, meaning that Juliet was forced to take the potion early and Romeo did not receive the letter in time.
Looking at the evidence I have decided that there is not one parent or parent substitute that can be blamed for the tragic ending in Romeo and Juliet but several main factors combined with several smaller events are the reason the tragic ending to the play. In my view the only way that the tragic ending could have been averted is if all of the parents and parent substitutes were in formed of the situation between Romeo and Juliet and had been persuaded to set aside the grudge and negotiate terms agreeable by both. Unfortunately this was almost impossible and so the tragic ending of Romeo and Juliet was simply fate.
Shakespeare talks about the unavoidable fate of Romeo and Juliet in the Prologue,
“Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife.”
These lines talk about how Romeo and Juliet were overthrown, suggesting it was out of their hands, fate. But the next line also tells us that it was the “parents’ strife” which implies that it was the fault of the parents that caused the tragic deaths.
