Friar Lawrence To Blame In Romeo And Juliet

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These violent delights have violent ends And in their triumph die, like fire and powder, Which, as they kiss they consume. The sweetest honey Is loathsome in his own deliciousness And in the taste confounds the appetite. Therefore love moderately: long love doth so; Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow” Those are Friar Lawrence's words of advice to Romeo on the day he marries Juliet. Only days after the marriage both Romeo and Juliet will commit suicide. The ill fated lovers were not the only casualties however, four others died in the short span of a few days. With all the chaos that happens in the last couple acts of the play, trying to assign blame is difficult. Many characters had a role in a seemingly implausible amount if coincidences that leads up to the deaths,…show more content…
I believe that the three biggest factors to blame are Friar Lawrence, The Families of Montague and Capulet, and Love itself. Friar Lawrence is the character in the play who had the biggest chance to stop both Romeo and Juliet on multiple occasions but never does. This does not make the Friar a malicious character, in fact, everything he does he does with’ good intentions in mind. The entire reason for agreeing to marry Romeo and Juliet was to end the fued, but that only helped to lead to the pair’s demise. Another aspect that could have been to blame is the families of Romeo and Juliet. The bad blood between the families creates a volatile mood in Verona where a city wide fight could break out at the drop of a hat. The feud is set up from the beginning by the chorus telling us “Ancient grudge break to new mutiny, where civil blood makes civil hands unclean”This is an unhealthy environment for Romeo and Juliet’s relationship to grow and gives the need carry out the marriage in secrecy, leaving few people to counsel them. The reason Juliet went through with her fake suicide plan was because of her father forcing her into marriage. The biggest factor to
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