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If I were to tell you that you had 2 minutes to decide, with evidence, who was to blame for the deaths of Romeo and Juliet, who would you choose? There’s some many different theory’s behind this matter, but in my opinion, it’s Friar Lawrence that we need to blame. He stuck his nose into matters where he was not concerned, trusted unreliable sources, got others to do the dirty work for him, and even misused his own advice. If this doesn’t say that he’s to blame, I don’t know what else does.
The Friar is selfish. I think we can all agree on that. In my opinion, an important reason when considering who to blame is the Friar and all the meddling he did. Even if you don’t believe that he is to blame, it is quite fair to say that by the end of the play, he knew that he has stuffed up and started to only think about himself and what could happen to him, which therefore leads to Romeo and Juliet’s death. If the Friar had not meddled with Romeo and Juliet’s risky and precarious relationship, Juliet would have married Paris and Romeo would have gotten over Juliet. Even though Juliet would not have been as happy with Paris as she would have been with Romeo, it would have made the families happy and all would have been good. In Ⅱⅵ.35, The Friar tells the two to ‘come with me, and we will make short work.’ This manipulative and sneaky exchange proves that the Friar does not care about what the consequences are of his actions, along with when he and Juliet make the plan to fake her death, proving the point that he should be blamed.
On the other hand, we can prove that the Friar is to blame because of the way that he didn’t take matters into his own hands and trusted an unreliable source. Because of the way that he relied on Friar John to get the letter to Romeo explaining Juliet's counterfeit death, he had no way of making sure the message reached him, therefore when Friar John failed the task, Romeo killed himself. Some may say that this makes it Friar Johns's fault, but the poor man was quarantined in a house due to an outbreak of the plague, meaning that if Friar Lawrence had just delivered the message himself, neither Romeo nor Juliet would have killed themselves. The Friar disregarded others' needs and failed to fix the problem he’d created. When he finds out that Friar John has been quarantined and banned from leaving Verona, the Friar cries, 'Unhappy fortune!' which mimicked Romeo's previous statement stating that he became 'fortune's fool.' You have to agree, this was the pivotal point in the play because it is what set the ball rolling for the deaths of the star-crossed lovers, and poor Friar John was stuck in the middle of it all, taking the blame for Friar Lawrence’s injudicious and rash actions.
My final point to prove that Friar Lawrence is to blame is how he contradicted himself. The Friar rushed Romeo and Juliet into marriage even though in Ⅱⅵ.15, he said ‘Therefore love moderately. Long love doth so. Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.’ By saying this, the Friar is highlighting that when you take a relationship too quickly, you run out of love. He says that if you do something too fast, it is as bad as taking it too slow. The Friar knew that they’d only known each other for a short amount of time, but his hopes were that if he could marry the two, then the feud between the two families would end because they would have to start to get along for the sake of their children’s marriage. The only problem would be that they would need to be married first because the parents would never give consent or the marriage. It was not his position to take charge of the situation, and it was rash and impulsive to do so, even though he knew it would not end well. Again, in Ⅱⅲ.90, The Friar says warns Romeo to take it slow by saying 'Wisely and slow. They stumble that run fast.', but when we think about it, he was the one to encourage the quick marriage. Once more, in Ⅱⅵ.10, the Friar foreshadows the tragic ending of the play by explaining to Romeo how when love is taken hastily, it can have very shocking endings. By highlighting this topic many times, Shakespeare is discreetly putting the blame onto Friar Lawrence.
Overall, it may be said that the parents are to be blamed, or Tybalt, or even Romeo and Juliet themselves, but I think that all the evidence really does point towards Friar Lawrence. With his sneaky and devious ways, he manipulated and tricked everyone in his path, just so he could get what he wanted. And when things got rough, he left Juliet at the tomb, only for her to kill herself. So, with all things considered, I believe that Friar Lawrence is to be blamed for the death of Juliet and her Romeo.
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