Friar Lawrence’s role in the play is as Romeo’s confidante, Romeo confides in him about everything, more so than his closest friends Mercutio and Benvolio this is because he feels that this love is special and needs to be kept private whereas he has to tell friar Lawrence in order for him to marry the lovers and he also feels that Juliet is too special for Mercutio and Benvolio to make crude jokes about as they did with Rosaline, he does not want to risk this by telling them. Since he is a holy man, the audience get the impression that friar Lawrence’s actions are Gods will and so his encouragement of the blossoming love between the two young people cannot be considered as inconsiderate or wrong and yet if it wasn’t for the friar, they would not have succeeded in being together and hence would not have died together in the end and so to an extent the friar is partly to blame. The friar’s motives for helping Romeo to pursue his love was to “turn [their] households’ rancour to pure love” incongruously, this was achieved only in their deaths. He also wanted to help a friend and portray his actions in a favourable light because he has a sense of superiority; he looks for the regard and respect of others and is afraid of his shortcomings. The responsibility for the deaths of Romeo and Juliet cannot be held with Friar Lawrence because his intentions were pure; he genuinely wanted to bring an end to the family feud. The nurse, a parallel of the friars character, knew just as much of the events as the friar did but shies away from involvement at a crucial moment, the character of the friar seems far more loyal a confidante than the nurse is for Juliet. He tries to help and although his motives are misguided, they are genuine and faithful to his belief of true love.
The extent of Romeo and Juliet’s love is another consequential aspect of their deaths. The love is pure and true, the audience can realise this when they compare Romeo’s affection for Rosaline at the beginning with his wooing of Juliet, spoken in beautiful sonnet verse. Their love is so unique and tragic because it must contend with the adversity of a society at war with itself: it is a love against all odds. It is because of the extent of their love that they were both prepared to take the ultimate sacrifice for one another “love give me strength! And strength shall help afford”. Their love overlooked the insignificant prejudice between the two families, “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” and it is this maturity and wisdom that essentially leads them to their deaths in the feuding society they live in. Towards the beginning of the play Juliet declares, “my only love sprung from my only hate” about Romeo. Hate refers to the hatred that she has a sense of obligation to feel about his name, she feels she must be loyal to her family but at the same time she feels that Romeo is destined to be her only love and she goes on to complain about her misfortune in not knowing of Romeo’s heritage until it was too late and her feelings for him cannot be reversed.
To call Romeo and Juliet “star-cross’d lovers” can be interpreted in more than one-way. They are ill fated because they both share tragic death at the end of the play but they are also star-cross’d in that their love shines in the darkness of the feuding society around them. They, the younger generation, are purer and wiser than their elders who never cease to squabble until, in their grief, they realise that it is their feud, which has led to their children’s death. This in itself could be considered fate because the feud between the families which “but their children’s end, nought could remove” meant that the tragedy needed to occur for peace to return between the citizens of Verona. Characters along the way may seem to influence how the play turns out in the end but they all link back to fate. The feuding families needed the tragedy to resolve the feud, friar Lawrence acts as an innocent agent of fate, he is needed by the play to encourage the true love between Romeo and Juliet and offer a solution to Juliet, which subsequently turned out to be fatal.
After analysing the different aspects that could have affected the tragic ending, I came to the conclusion that Shakespeare intended the responsibility to lie outside the characters and events that occur, he intended it to lie with fate, it was their destiny to die in the end. Throughout the play, never does Shakespeare lose the idea of fate and this is evident through dramatic irony. The lovers are described as “star-cross’d”, their love as “death-mark’d” and there are several hints suggesting the ending such as “Methinks I see thee…in the bottom of a tomb” and after Mercutio’s malevolent, “a plague on both you houses” it is inevitable that the play will end unhappily. Chance and misfortune are not to be forgotten. Alongside fate runs mistakes and misfortune and these tragic mistakes are usually caused by haste. Had Juliet awoken moments earlier then the tragedy would not have occurred, had friar Lawrence not left Juliet alone in the vault in the last scene, her predictable suicide would not have happened and had Friar John delivered the letter sent to Romeo by Friar Lawrence the tragedy would also have been avoided. However, the failure to deliver the letter is such a trivial occurrence (Friar John was locked into a house where the plague was suspected) that we can draw the conclusion that fate played the main hand in the lovers’ untimely end.