What Causes Friar Lawrence To Blame In Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet

The play “Romeo and Juliet”, by William Shakespeare is famous for its romantic tragedy. It is about two young teenagers who are from enemy families. They end up falling in love with each other and eventually get married in secret. At this point, everything begins to crumble; Romeo kills Juliet’s cousin and gets banished from Verona. Juliet takes a potion to induce a coma upon herself to avoid to reunite with Romeo. However, when Romeo sees her seemingly dead, he drinks poison to kill himself. Shortly afterwards, Juliet wakes up only to find Romeo dead, and consequently, she kills herself too. However, this tragedy cannot entirely be blamed on Romeo and Juliet. There were many causes: Friar Lawrence, Romeo, and Juliet, along with fate, and

He is a man others turn to for advice and solutions. However, despite knowing the enmity between the Capulets and Montagues, he encourages a relationship that is clearly condemned to fail. Friar Lawrence says, “For this alliance may so happy prove to turn your households’ rancour into pure love”. In spite of being an experienced religious figure who should be rather wise, his poor judgement makes him believe that marrying Romeo and Juliet would end the hostility between the two families, not knowing how inconceivably mistaken he was. He even goes against his own warning, “Wisely and slow, they stumble that run fast”. Friar Lawrence also concocted a plan to help reunite Juliet with Romeo. He gives Juliet a poison that will put her into a self-induced coma to mislead her family members into thinking she has passed away. Friar Lawrence says, “Take thou this vial, being then in bed, and this distilling liquor drink thou off”. This shows that Friar Lawrence had devised a plan to help Juliet avoid marrying Paris and reunite with Romeo instead. The vial had allowed Juliet to induce a coma upon herself, effectively circumventing her marriage with Paris. However, Romeo had seen her in this state and, assuming she was dead, had killed Paris along with himself. Friar also knew of Romeo’s dangerous mood and therefore should have never risked this type of