Examples Of Character Flaws In Romeo And Juliet

According to Collins Dictionary, “A flaw in someone’s character is an undesirable quality that they have.” Many characters in Romeo and Juliet had major flaws. Three characters – Romeo, Juliet, and Friar Lawrence – have major flaws that lead to their downfall. All of these various flaws were fatal. Romeo’s tragic character flaw is his impulsiveness. In act 2, Romeo is conversing with the nurse in which they say, “Good heart, and i’faith, I will tell her as much. Lord, Lord, / she will be a joyful woman. / What wilt thou tell her, Nurse? Thou dost not mark me. I will tell her, sir, that you do protest, which, as I take it, is / a gentlemanlike offer. / Bid her devise / Some means to come to shrift this afternoon. / And there she shall at Friar Lawrence’ cell / Be shrived and married. Here is for thy / pains. / No, truly, sir. Not a penny. / Go to. I say you shall.

The reader can see this in Act 4 when he is telling Juliet: “Hold, daughter. I do spy a kind of hope, / Which craves as desperate which we would prevent. / If, rather than to marry County Paris, / Thou has the strength of will to slay thyself. / Then is it likely thou wilt undertake / A thing like death to chide away this shame, / That copest with death himself to ‘scape from it. / An if thou darest, I’ll give thee remedy” (Shakespeare 4.1.69-77). Juliet threatens to kill herself, and Friar Lawrence immediately attempts to come up with a solution that might have huge negative side effects. Another quote in which the reader can see Friar Lawrence’s ability to be persuaded easily is in Act 2 when he marries Romeo and Juliet after not much convincing from Romeo. He says “Oh, she knew well / Thy love did read by rote, that could not spell. / But come, young waverer, come, go with me, / In one respect I’ll thy assistant be, / For this alliance may so happy prove / To turn your households’ rancor to pure love” (Shakespeare