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surprising in her comment to her husband about Juliet, “I would the fool were married to her grave”. She also gave her daughter into the care of the nurse, which demonstrates she doesn’t care much about her.
On the other hand, Juliet’s father is only doing what his culture expects of him- finding a suitable match for his daughter, which brings us back to blame the society. If we can believe Paris, he arranges the marriage to go ahead early in order to help Juliet get over her grief, which he believes is about the death of Tybalt.
The Montagues are more absent in the play then their rivals, certainly to show the distance between boys and their parents at this period. They are as responsible for the feud going as the Capulets. If they had been a little more understanding, Romeo wouldn’t feel like he had to keep secrets from them.
As we have just explained, Juliet and Romeo have an almost non-existant relationship with their parents. The Nurse and Friar Lawrence fill this void with their role of what we would call today “surrogate parents”. Whether they execute their task well is the question of the following paragraph.
The Nurse is very fond of Juliet and we may believe she thinks of her as her own daughter. She is also very protective. However, she encourages Juliet’s romantic ideas by carrying messages to Romeo and helps the lovers to meet and get married secretly. Through all this, she never acknowledged that maybe Juliet was not ready for such an immense step in her life. As Capulets’ servant, she should have told them about Romeo and Juliet’s disobedience.
After all this support she has given Juliet, she suddenly changes radically her ideas and tries to persuade her that “Romeo’s a dishclout to [Paris]”. We can see this as a betrayal which pushes Juliet to a desperate state of mind, having lost her only help in this affair.
Friar Lawrence plays an unwitting role, as does everyone else. In his first scene we see him with the poison, and this scene links up with his last two scenes and the consequences of that same poison.
He should never have agreed to marry Romeo and Juliet in secret. He took these newly met lustful children into their marriage while he could clearly see they were unable to make their own decisions. This can be proved about Romeo because when he is banished, he bellows and cries like a child. The Nurse has to make him act like a man and think of Juliet instead of himself.
Moreover, the Friar knew that Romeo has been obsessed with Rosaline, his previous love, for a long time and could not have been convinced by the purity of Romeo’s love to Juliet.
Furthermore, he marries the two fully aware that they do not have their parents’ consent. He should have refused to marry them or sought the advice of an older and more experienced member of the church.
He pushes Juliet to “Take [...] this vial, being then in bed And this distilling liquor drink[...]off” which is one of the major reasons of the lovers’ tragic end. This plan has so many flaws and he should have seen at least some of them. It was a very rash decision, and, if thought out properly, he would have realised the dire consequences and complications that could occur.
Friar Lawrence tries to dissuade Paris from marrying Juliet. This could be seen as a selfish behavior on his part, as the Friar knows he would be committing a sin if he married Juliet to Paris, when she was already married to Romeo.
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Another example of the Friar’s selfish intentions, is the tomb scene, whereupon finding Juliet in there, and two dead bodies lying on the floor, he needs no persuasion to leave, which he does in immense haste!
On the other hand, it would be a hard man indeed who laid all the blame for this tragedy at the cell door of Friar Lawrence. His potion actually worked as it was intended, and he only suggests it as a desperate, but possible way out of an impossible situation. In fact, we have to remember he is a man of the Church, and suicide was considered a mortal sin. Romeo, in Act III, scene 3, when he learns of his banishment and the Nurse then tells him of Juliet’s grief, threatens to kill himself. And in Act IV, scene 1, after Juliet has met Paris at the Friar’s cell, she too becomes suicidal.
Juliet has an almost non-existent relationship with Capulet. Friar Lawrence fills this void by portraying a father figure in Juliet’s life. She trusts him and confides in him regularly. (“Hold daughter. I do spy a kind of hope”). In addition the Friar is also Romeo’s confident
and tries to find solutions to their overwhelming problems.
He also breaks the terrible news to Romeo about his banishment, and he tries to do so in a human way. He comforts the distraught Romeo and offers him all his help.
The friar doesn't expect disaster when he marries the two. In fact, he does so hoping the union will bring together the feuding families.
Friar Lawrence largely contributed to the deaths of Romeo and Juliet by marrying
them despite their ages, giving Juliet the poison and by not thinking things through clearly. Instead he always tried to find a quick solution. However, he has a kind disposition, and honestly tries to help Romeo and Juliet in whatever way he can. And, to give him
his due, he did confess his sins, and offer to sacrifice his life. This confession, added to the tragic deaths of the young lovers, ceased the ancient fight between the Capulets and the Montagues.
Other contributors to this pitiful ending are two young people who died as a cause to this ridiculous feud: Tybalt and Mercutio.
All Capulets and Montagues perpetuated the feud but Tybalt, Juliet’s cousin, was the most violent one. He started the fight that resulted in Romeo getting banished and he was always causing trouble. He, more than anyone else in the story, kept the hatred alive between the two families.
Mercutio had a significant influence on Romeo as a result to the friendship he bore for him. However, Mercutio`s attitude to the quarrels and fighting made the situation worse. He saw the feud as a game and that attitude led him to his death and Romeo’s banishment. His lack of concern for crucial matters leads him to the same tragic end for which he is partly responsible.
Escales, the Prince of Verona, represents the law in this play.He appears as a just ruler and is deeply concerned by the feuding going on in his state. However, he doesn’t do enough. He should have acted earlier to stop the feud between the two families. And it was unjust of him to send Romeo away from Verona as a punishment for killing Tybalt, when the fight was Tybalt's and partly Mercutio’s fault. He has the power to act to stop the feud between the two families but he only makes the situation (for the lovers) worse by banishing Romeo.
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We have to consider that Romeo and Juliet themselves had an effect on their own fates. After all, it is them who actually "pull the trigger" on their lives.
Romeo acted too hastily throughout the play. He shouldn't have asked Juliet to marry him so suddenly, and he should have thought more carefully before rushing back to Verona after hearing of Juliet's death. He also acted violently and without thinking when he killed Tybalt and, later, Paris. He was also a romancer because at the opening of the story, he was in love with Rosaline and only afterwards he fell in love with Juliet. Romeo is too hot blooded; he is a murderer, even if he was only avenging Mercutio.
Juliet shouldn’t have deceived and disobeyed her parents. Like Romeo, she was too
rash in rushing into marriage. She knew she was already engaged to Paris at the time of the ball when she first met Romeo and until then she was very happy with her parent’s choice of Paris, a wealthy bachelor.
We have presently analysed all the characters who were involved in the tragedy of Romeo’s and Juliet’s end. However, without the contribution of fate, the tragedy wouldn’t have occured.
Misunderstandings are constantly present in the play, and everyone gets caught up in them. Being “star-crossed” doesn't help the lovers. It puts Fate against them, and then anything they do is going to lead them only to their predestined fates. Fate seemed to control their lives and force them together, becoming the ultimate controlling power in this play. A large part of the beliefs of both Romeo and Juliet involved fate, they believed in the stars and that their actions were not always their own. Romeo says in Act I, Scene 4, “Some consequence yet hanging in the stars….By some vile forfeit of untimely death. But He that hath the steerage over my course Direct my sail!”. The only instance of fate manages to direct Romeo into its web like a spider.
There is another example of strong fate when an illiterate servant of the Capulets is sent to invite people to the ball. Romeo sees the list with Rosaline’s name on it, which pushes Romeo and his friends to the ball where he meets Juliet.
If fate didn’t put them together then what or who did?
Even Time and Nature participate in the overthrowing of Romeo and Juliet. Note that Mercutio curses the families with a "plague on both your houses" and that Fr. John's letter does not get to Romeo because of a plague. Note also that Time goes foolish in the play. The sleeping potion should take 42 hours to complete its work, but if you track the time in the play carefully you'll find 15 hours missing.
The tragedy was not entirely the fault of any one individual - it happened mostly because of bad luck. It was fate that Romeo and Juliet met and fell in love, and bad luck that the letter which could have saved them didn't reach Romeo in time.
Having carefully analysed William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, trying to find who was responsible for their tragedy, I have come to the conclusion that what Shakespeare was trying to do in the play was to make it virtually impossible to answer. By that, I don’t mean he tried to confuse people. What he wanted to show is that tragedy here comes from a combination of factors, not from one single act or individual. That is, he wanted people to
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discuss this matter with others and to discover that there's always disagreement over who is
most responsible, and that it depends on the point of view of the individual. Older people
might be inclined to blame the young lovers for their rashness and younger people might want to blame father Capulet for wanting to control Juliet and being to strict on her.
This question does not have a single right answer, because it is impossible to “measure” responsibility in such a way that you can lay most blame on one person - it's more appropriate to think about how each contributes to the tragedy. The responsibility for the deaths of the young people lies firmly at the door of the so-called responsible adults who created and sustain a divided society.
The feud between the Capulets and Montagues is a cancer in the society of Verona, everyone is affected by it.
To establish who or what is the cause of Romeo’s and Juliet’s deaths, we would have to define “cause”. At the first extension, it's the strength of the poison and the sharpness of the knife that cause the death of Romeo and Juliet. At a further extension, it's the failure of Friar John to deliver the essential letter to Romeo telling him of Friar Lawrence's plan. Beyond that
it might be Juliet's enforced marriage to Paris. Beyond that it could be the enmity of the families of Montague and Capulet. And beyond that, there are the causes of this quarrel, and so on. Romeo and Juliet is one of the most carefully plotted of Shakespeare’s plays, making you constantly ask questions about cause and effect. Perhaps it's because the causes are so many and complex that I chose to lay primal blame on the 'inauspicious stars', on their 'star-cross'd' lives.
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