Friar Lawrence To Blame In Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet

Friar Lawrence is the most to blame for Romeo and Juliet’s fates. In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet there were many characters involved in “protecting” Romeo and Juliet when it came to their secret relationship, which ended fatally for both of them. Throughout the play, a major culprit is Friar Lawrence who actively put Romeo and Juliet in danger by marrying them in secret, allowing Juliet to fake her death, and failing to tell Romeo about his plan. Friar Lawrence is at most fault for Romeo and Juliet’s deaths because he put them in danger by helping them be together in secret.

Friar Lawrence was convinced that marrying Romeo and Juliet would end the feud between the Montagues and Capulets when he told Romeo “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” (Shakepeare 2.3.89-92). This was a mistake on Friar Lawrence’s part for involving himself in Romeo and Juliet’s situation and directly contributing to their fates. Although he most likely had pure intentions of potentially ending the two families’ feuds with one another, his plan was risky and led to many miscommunications. John F. Andrews, a Shakespeare critic, claims that Friar Lawrence had good intentions, yet poor efforts to end the two families’ feud. “(hence his [Friar Lawrence’s] well-intended but ill-advised efforts to use unauthorized means to end the city's feuding, about to cover his traces and avoid being caught at the graveyard in Act 5), and all of his error-prone judgments and makeshift expedients presuppose an improvident reliance on Fortune's notoriously unreliable cooperation” (Andrews 9). This is an example of one of the many opinions about Friar Lawrence’s destructive behavior.
Douglas Dupler, a writer and college teacher, claimed that Friar Lawrence was the one to blame by saying “The friar respects and acknowledges the love between Romeo and Juliet when he agrees to secretly marry them. However, by doing this in secret, he subverts the established secular order. In the end, rather than mediating from his position of religious authority, the friar devises a secretive plan that goes wrong and leads to the death of the young lovers” (Dupler 3). He blatantly expresses that he believes Friar Lawrence caused the death of Romeo and Juliet because he strayed from his authority as a religious figure in order to devise an unsuccessful plan.
Friar Lawrence then made the risky decision of giving Juliet a sleeping potion for tricking her family and Paris into believing she is dead in order for her to be able to run away with Romeo (Shakespeare 4.1.92-123).

Although this seems like the ideal plan, Friar Lawrence ran into the many risks of miscommunications. He had convinced Juliet into believing the plan was ideal, flawless, and reassured her that he was going to make Romeo aware of the fact that her death was fake by saying “In the meantime, against thou shalt awake, Shall Romeo by my letters know our drift, And hither shall he come, and he and I Will watch thy waking, and that very night Shall Romeo bear thee hence to Mantua” (Shakespeare 4.1.116-120). Friar Lawrence then continued to reassure her by saying “I’ll send a friar with speed To Mantua with my letters to thy lord” (4.1.126-127). Friar Lawrence was very unreliable in this situation because he did not stick to his word with Juliet, which ultimately causes a chain of unfortunate events for everyone involved in the

play.

After Friar Lawrence falsely reassured Juliet that he will inform Romeo of the plan and Juliet followed through to fake her death, Balthasar told Romeo “Her body sleeps in the Capulet tomb, and her immortal soul lives with the angels in heaven. I saw her buried in her family’s tomb, and then I came here to tell you the news. Oh, pardon me for bringing this bad news, but you told me it was my job, sir” (5.1.18-23) before Romeo received the letter from Friar explaining the situation. This shows the miscommunications Friar Lawrence should have attempted to avoid. Douglas Dupler claimed that “In this condition he [Romeo] draws a dagger, and only the Friar’s intervention forestalls an instant suicide” (Dupler 7). In this statement Dupler claims that Friar Lawrence’s attempts at helping Romeo and Juliet lead to suicide. This is very true because Friar Lawrence was the one responsible for reaching out to Romeo in time, and is therefore responsible for the impulsive decisions Romeo and Juliet made leading up to the point of their suicides.
Although others may argue that the Nurse was responsible for the deaths of Romeo and Juliet just as much as Friar Lawrence was, this is very untrue.

The Nurse did keep Romeo and Juliet’s romance a secret as Friar Lawrence did, but the Nurse was not nearly as destructive as him. The Nurse did not go to the lengths Friar Lawrence went to in order to execute what turned out to be a failure of a plan. The Nurse does make some remarks to insist that she will protect Juliet by insisting that she will bring a ladder for Romeo to climb to spend the night with Juliet in her room “I must another way, To fetch a ladder by the which your love Must climb a bird's nest soon when its dark” (Shakespeare 2.5.77-79). Although later on in the play, she insists on Juliet marrying Paris “Romeo is banished, and all the world to nothing That he dares ne'er come back to challenge you, Or, if he do, it needs must be by stealth. Then, since the case so stands as now it doth, I think it best you married with the County. O, he's a lovely gentleman! Romeo's a dishclout to him. An eagle, madam, Hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye As Paris hath. Beshrew my very heart, I think you are happy in this second match, For it excels your first, or, if it did not, Your first is dead, or 'twere as good he were, As living here and you no use of him” (Shakespeare 3.5.226-238). The Nurse did not actively attempt to scheme an elaborate plan that did not end up working out the way Friar Lawrence did, in fact

she later attempted to convince Juliet to marry Paris instead to avoid the drama of it all. Friar Lawrence was far more destructive than the Nurse because of his more direct approach in Romeo and Juliet’s relationship.
To conclude, Friar Lawrence is at most fault for Romeo and Juliet’s deaths because he put them in danger by helping them be together in secret. Friar Lawrence took the extreme measures of marrying them, faking a death, and failing to communicate properly towards the end. Without his constant meddling in Romeo and Juliet’s relationship, the play would not have ended the way it did. He took the largest role in their fates by devising an unsuccessful plan that led up to Romeo and Juliet’s mutual suicides. Friar Lawrence is the character to blame in the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare.