Friar Lawrence is another very involved character who has a lot to do with Romeo and Juliet’s marriage and personal life. He is a very good person who is looking out for the young couple and does everything he can to help them, but his involvement may not have been such a good thing and he may have offered his help more than was sensible. He does get too involved and is persuaded by Romeo and Juliet to marry them without their parents knowing anything about it and in the end he has to much responsibility to ensure that everything goes to plan.
Friar Lawrence does have good reasoning behind the actions he takes, but that does not always justify his actions, for example when he agrees to marry Romeo and Juliet, he says, “For this alliance may so happy prove, to turn your households’ rancour to pure love”. He thinks that by marrying Romeo and Juliet, their feuding families will resolve their issues. Although this is not the immediate interest of Romeo and Juliet, it is placing extra pressure on Romeo and Juliet to hurry into marriage because the Friar said that it might bring their families together at last. This plan is not very sensible but after Romeo gets banished he soon has another one, he decides to give Juliet the potion that makes it appear as though she is dead while he gets a message to Romeo to tell him that she isn’t actually dead but just buried. This is very risky especially when he decides to let another Friar deliver the message to Romeo and all relies on somebody else to do his job which turns out to be a bad idea mainly because he doesn’t have control over what is going on. When the message does not get delivered to Romeo he cannot blame himself and instead chooses to blame the stars, “Unhappy fortune”, this is another reference to fate which is made only this time by a character. It is fair to say that the Friar has very important involvement in the tragedy, but he is always only trying to help Romeo and Juliet out of their problems, it was not a good idea for him to let himself become so involved with the plot and can only have himself to be angry with when he eventually gets the blame.
Romeo starts out in the play as a mischievous young teenager who has a crush on a girl but quickly falls in love with one of his family’s enemies and becomes involved in a life of murder, secrecy and tragedy. He has a lot of misfortune and nearly always blames fate when something goes wrong even after he murders Tybalt, Juliet’s cousin, he blames the stars rather than himself, “O, I am fortune’s fool”. The killing of Tybalt was the worst choice he could have made, although he cannot be blamed for it as he did try to stop the fight between Tybalt and his best friend Mercutio, however it meant that he was banished and could not see Juliet without risk of being caught and killed.
I don’t think Romeo can be given too much blame for the whole tragedy as everything that he did was because he fell in love with Juliet. He is certain that fate is against him and when he hears news from Balthasar that Juliet is dead, he says, “Then I defy you, stars”, meaning that he doesn’t want to let fate control his life anymore. Romeo is young and doesn’t seem to think much before taking his actions, a good example of this is the balcony scene when he risks getting caught trespassing on the Capulet’s property just to see Juliet a bit longer, and then again a bit later when he is in Juliet’s bedroom and the Nurse is looking for her. I do not think Romeo can be held responsible for the tragedy as he doesn’t think about what he is doing and just makes mistakes when all he wants is to be with the woman he loves.
At the start of the play, Juliet is also very young and naïve, a lot like Romeo. She instantly falls in love with him as soon as she meets him and stays loyal to him, without wishing to upset her family by letting them know about the relationship and marriage which happening behind their backs. She does take things into her own hands and quickly proposes marriage to Romeo, she is very like Romeo in that she does not think about the consequences of her actions. She stays beside Romeo even after he has killed her cousin, realising, unlike the Nurse, that had Romeo not killed Tybalt, he himself would be dead. She stays loyal to Romeo and looks out for him, in the balcony scene she warns him about getting caught, ”The orchard walls are high and hard to climb And the place death, considering who thou art” she is worried about them getting found out, showing that she still is scared of her parents, despite disobeying their wishes for her to marry Paris. Unlike Romeo though, she doesn’t blame her problems on fate, she blames the fact that they were born into feuding families, “Prodigious birth of love is to me, That I must love a loathed enemy.”
She is taking great risks in having a relationship with Romeo, as her parents aren’t very caring and are intent with her marrying Paris, “She shall be married to this noble earl”. Juliet gets very desperate and I do not think she warrants blame for the tragedy as she is so in love with Romeo that she is delighted to hear about the potion which might give them a chance to once again be together even if it means tricking everybody into thinking she has died. “Give me, give me! Oh tell me not of fear!” She does not think things through and acts on impulse, here she immediately accepts to take the potion and only later thinks about the possibility of it now working. She is very like Romeo and for this reason I do not think she deserved to be held responsible for their deaths.
Tybalt, Juliet’s cousin is not a very pleasant person and hates all Montagues regardless of who they actually are. He looks for trouble and eventually does get it in a most severe way. Tybalt loathes Romeo especially, and would be extremely angry if he knew about Romeo and Juliet’s relationship, at the ball when he finds out Romeo is present, he immediately tries to start trouble and does not give up. He finally challenges Romeo to a duel, which Romeo tries to resolve peacefully, but unfortunately he is not interested and two people end up dead. Tybalt is very hot-headed and likes to cause trouble, so a certain amount of blame can be attached to him, but it is not fair to say that the tragedy was completely his fault.
Mercutio similarly does not have a very big role in the tragedy but does enough to be considered. He is Romeo’s best friend and stays loyal to him, and eventually he dies due to trying to protect him against Tybalt. His death is a crucial moment as it angers Romeo to go and kill Tybalt to avenge Mercutio’s death. I think that Mercutio got himself a bit too involved but was just trying to be a good friend to Romeo, I do not think Tybalt or Mercutio can be blamed as neither knew about Romeo and Juliet’s love and may have acted differently if they had done.
After studying in detail the involvement of each character and fate’s inclusion in the play, I do not think that one character can be pinpointed as being wholly responsible for the tragedy. I think that each character contributed to the sequence of events ending in the deaths of Romeo and Juliet, but I also think that of all of the characters, Friar Lawrence is the one that can take most responsibility. I say this because he had a very large input and some complicated plans which did not pay off, the Friar need not have tried to help the young couple so much and could have stopped it all by refusing to marry them and telling their parents. I do think that Shakespeare wished us to see fate as partly to blame and I think it did play a small part in the couple’s doom, but there were far too many individual mistakes for fate to be blamed entirely.
