“Is Rosaline… so soon forsaken? Young men’s love then lies not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes”
Asking Friar Laurence to marry Romeo and Juliet is another event that ultimately caused the lovers’ deaths. In the balcony scene, he is asked by Juliet to arrange their marriage, if his “bent of love be honourable”. Instead of refusing to get married after knowing Juliet for such a short time, Romeo does get them married. This marriage is another factor which caused their death.
Furthermore, though this could be said not to be Romeo’s fault, he accidentally gets Mercutio killed when Mercutio is duelling Tybalt, and consequently kills Tybalt. It can be said that this was for honour, to punish Tybalt for killing Mercutio. This death causes Romeo to be exiled, which eventually leads to the couple’s deaths.
Lastly, his great haste is what gets him killed. When he hears of Juliet’s death, instead of grieving, he buys a poison, and upon seeing the dead body commits suicide.
Juliet can also be charged with being too hasty. She says herself that she had not yet heard “a hundred words of that tongue’s utterance”; yet in the same scene she already suggests marriage. As the chorus says, they are “alike bewitched by the charm of looks”. They cannot be truly in love yet; however they already want to get married, out of infatuation, not real love.
Much more directly, Juliet influences the tragic ending of the play at the end, when she goes to Friar Laurence and asks for a solution to the problem of Romeo’s exile and her coming marriage to Paris. In this moment, he gives her the potion which makes her look dead, which she gladly accepts, and then in the next scene, she lies to her parents about being in consent about marrying Paris.
Similarly to Romeo, her haste has her killed in the final scenes of the play, where upon seeing Romeo’s dead body next to her she stabs herself in the heart.
Mercutio could also be seen to be partially at fault. Although his sharp tongue does not deter Romeo from his love, his equally sharp ego causes him to fight Tybalt when Tybalt challenges Romeo to a duel and is denied. Before this event, in which Mercutio dies, the play could be called a comedy. However, at the moment of the death, and in the following duel to the death between Romeo and Tybalt, the play is irrecoverably turned into a tragedy. Although he cannot be blamed for dying in the duel, Mercutio can be blamed for fighting Tybalt in the first place.
Equally Tybalt could be seen as being at fault, for similar reasons to Mercutio. He is to blame for insulting Romeo and Mercutio, which leads to the fight, and he also kills Mercutio, and is killed himself, which is what leads to Romeo being exiled.
Friar Lawrence is also at fault, though again indirectly. Firstly, he performs the marriage ceremony, knowing the risks that this had. However, to be fair, he is not enthusiastic to perform the ceremony; he only manages to convince himself by saying that “this alliance may so happy prove, to turn your households’ rancour to pure love”, i.e. that this marriage could lead to the end of the family feud between Montagues and Capulets.
Secondly, he gives Juliet the potion that makes her seem dead. Again, however, he does not do this by his own preference: he only mentions the idea when Juliet starts to threaten him with suicide. He then sends a letter to Romeo via Friar John, however Friar John is put under quarantine due to fear of plague, and can neither leave the house, nor get a messenger to deliver the letter because they are afraid of infection. Again, this act can be blamed on no one except the health officials, who were working for the good of the town. When Friar Laurence arrives at the tomb, it is already too late, but this cannot be blamed on him.
Lord Capulet is also much to blame. He is the one who forces Juliet to marry Paris, saying that if she doesn’t she should “never after look [him] in the face” and that she “shall not house with” him, i.e. he will throw her out. This causes Juliet to go to Friar Laurence for advice, and consequently pretend to die.
Also, Capulet can be said to be continuing the family dispute much more than Montague: it is his faction that usually provokes the fighting. This dispute is what makes Romeo and Juliet’s love so tragic, as they say themselves “My only love sprung from my only hate”.
The fault can also be accredited to destiny and the stars. Had certain decisions been avoided, the “star-cross’d” lovers’ deaths may have been avoided. No single decision can be blamed for the deaths of Romeo and Juliet, and it seems too much a coincidence that they would all happen in such harmony. It also seems too much a coincidence that the characters themselves predict their deaths to an extent. Romeo does this early in the play, before he even meets Juliet, but when he is about to:
“I fear too early; for my mind misgives;
Some consequence yet hanging in the stars”
It seems that destiny has a significant role in the play. If Romeo had not been wearing a mask, Juliet may have known him to be a Montague, and would not have fallen in love. Had there not been an outbreak of the plague, Romeo would have known about Juliet faking her death. However these things did happen.
It is not clear whether destiny has a direct act in the play. It is not clear whether the death of the lovers was tragic inevitability, or just bad luck. Everyone in the play is responsible for their own decisions – be it Friar Laurence or Romeo and Juliet themselves. However, no one can be directly blamed for the deaths. It was simply a collection of bad decisions, whether by bad luck and coincidence or fate and destiny. One thing is clear – no one thing can stand alone for the reason for their deaths, but many things could alone have stopped it. Destiny’s only interference was to make sure that they didn’t.
