Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart.” (II. 3 12-15)
This is where Shakespeare is linking the poison and the friar from the very beginning and is fore shadowing the deaths caused by his hand.
As a man of God people believe he is not corrupt or does not have biased views. This is clearly why people put their misplaced trust in him. This means that he can, on a whim, choose to make a decision on behalf of the families to try and bring them together. He expresses shock at how easily Romeo has turned from Rosaline to Juliet, yet in the same scene decides,
“In one respect I’ll thy assistant be:
For this alliance may so happy prove,
To turn your households’ rancour to pure love.” (II.3 22-24)
This is the first time you begin to see that the friar has greater plans beyond Romeo and Juliet, but to their two families.
Once he has embarked upon his ‘master plan’ and is committed to it you can see his actions get more and more drastic as he feels his plan is losing its way. The non-delivery of the letter to Romeo “may do much danger” but he can not turn back. Although his intentions are good to start with, he realises that if he was to be found out, all his deceitful actions would be exposed and he does not want his image to be disgraced or discredited. His own egotistical prowess and self-centredness cause him to persevere with his story even though the best thing to do would be to admit his fault and stop before it gets out of hand. Ultimately, the Friar’s own conflicting emotions are what cause him to accidentally bring about the death of two young, innocent children.
“And here I stand both to impeach and purge
Myself condemned, and myself excus’d.” (V.3 22-23)
It is only at the end of the play that he is beginning to accept some responsibility for the tragic events,
“...and if aught in this
Miscarried by my fault, let my old life
Be sacrific’d some hour before his time,
Unto the rigour of severest law.” (V.3 31-34)
The nurse on the other hand may well be the equivalent of the friar to Romeo but she lacks his initiative and self confidence to be able to think out something as complex or long sighted as his plan. The nurse does had a much closer relationship with Juliet than the friar and Romeo as the nurse lost her own daughter and she would be the same age as Juliet. Therefore she feels as though Juliet is her new daughter who she is meant to look after.
“Eve at night shall she be fourteen, Susan and she”.
This may also show that she has grasped too tightly to try and replace the gap that was created when her daughter died and she has now replaced her with Juliet as a desperate attempt to feel secure again.
They way that the nurse would be implicated for the deaths of Romeo and Juliet would be that she encouraged and endorsed the relationship and marriage and did nothing of the sort to try and slow down or prevent it. She got caught up in the whole idea of a white wedding and young love, to the extent where she was no longer objective. A good sign if this is when the Nurse brings Juliet news of Romeo's wedding arrangements, she focuses on the pleasures of Juliet's wedding night,
"I am the drudge, and toil in your delight,
But you shall bear the burden soon at night" (II.5.75–76).
This also reinforces the idea of her immaturity and how she does act as a responsible adult to Juliet and becomes less of a mother figure and more of teenage girlfriend who she can gossip with. I personally believe that due to the extreme trauma that she endured when her own daughter died she has found a way of coping with it; which is to regress to her own childhood behaviour.
However the nurse is less to blame and this becomes more apparent when we get to the closing parts of the play and it all gets more serious and in-depth. Once Romeo has been exiled and banished from Verona and is forced to seek refuge elsewhere, it becomes more perceptible to the nurse that Juliet’s relationship with Romeo will not work out, and she begins to realise that the best thing for her would be to marry Paris. She suddenly turns totally around and begins to advise Juliet to forget the banished Romeo and marry Paris, betraying Juliet's trust by advocating a false marriage.
“I think it best you married with the County.
O, he's a lovely gentleman.
Romeo's a dishclout to him.” (III.5.218–220)
This is the first time where you think she shows true maturity, but I feel that as soon as Lord Capulet becomes enraged and set his place of authority she becomes submissive and just follows her orders; as she is just a house servant and has no real power or influence.
However by her doing this you she betrays Juliet and because Juliet now feels she has no one on her side and no one to turn to she takes more drastic actions and decides to fake her own death.
In conclusion I feel the deaths of Romeo and Juliet were caused both by the nurse and the friar with some unlucky coincidental decisions being made between the two of them. The nurse played her part as she was the pushy slightly confused corrupt mentor who guided Juliet in all the wrong directions and did not act like an adult figure throughout the whole play. She caused Juliet not to see the full extent of her actions and blurred the line between love and lust. However technically she did nothing physically wrong whereas the friar was the one who actually made the plans and told them both specifically what to do. Also as he had more power over the relationship he should have stepped in. Also his reasons for doing this are questionable as he was not solely doing it for Romeo and Juliet but to try and bring the families together whereas the nurse was just trying to look after and help Juliet. The friar decision to try and join the families together may have clouded his judgement and means he lost his objective view, and started to forget so much about Romeo and Juliet’s personal life and consequently forgot about their feelings and started to just use them as pawns on a chess board.
