asking you about friar lauwerence (bungled his name oops)
cause I thought he was mostly chill
but I would love to be proven wrong
Oh boy where to start with this guy. Here’s a summarized version of my bachelor’s thesis against Friar Lawrence:
If you’re looking at Romeo and Juliet from its base story, star-crossed lovers torn apart by a generations-long rivalry, yeah sure, Friar Lawrence is seen as a protagonist.
He’s not supposed to be. And he wouldn’t be, in Shakespeare’s time. His audience would have been horrified that Friar Lawrence was so unprofessional.
1.) Juliet was too young to be married, and Friar Lawrence knew this.
We have to keep in mind that Romeo and Juliet are both very young. The 1580s saw the legal age of marriage raised to 14 WITH parental permission. Juliet was only 13 and Romeo was 16-17 when Friar Lawrence married them — without her parents’ permission. You had to be 21 to be married without parental permission. (R&J was written in the 1590s, so this was definitely social commentary from Shakespeare.) So that was 100% illegal. Considering how important the sanctity of marriage was during the early modern era, this would have been shocking for Shakespeare’s plebeian audience.
2.) Friar Lawrence’s role in their marriage was heinously inappropriate.
Friar Lawrence arranged the marriage plot to wed Romeo and Juliet. This grown man let a 13 year old girl sway him into marrying them. He let a child convince him to marry her to this boy that she knew for, at the time, less than 48 hours.
Courtship and marriage weren’t that different from dating today. It was supposed to take a long time. You get to know each other, court for usually a year or more, then get engaged, then get married. People valued the time during courtship because you were getting to know the person you were going to be with for the rest of your life. That time is priceless, and so, so necessary for a happy, successful marriage.
Friar Lawrence never cared that R & J were aristocracy, so we can throw out any argument comparing it to rushed/arranged aristocratic marriages. Friar Lawrence obviously saw their love. So realistically, he should have told them to nurture their relationship and spend time courting, rather than rushing into MARRIAGE after TWO DAYS. There’s no way that man didn’t know better.
And remember, this was before Juliet’s engagement to Paris, so that doesn’t in play yet.
3.) He’s. The. One. Who. Puts. The. Fake. Death. Plot. Into. Juliet’s. Head.
Honestly. Who the hell does that.
This overwhelmed, scared, 13 year old girl who is suffering from the hands of societal misogyny wants to marry for love. I can forgive Friar Lawrence for putting that over the law. But come on. Fake death?? That’s what he came up with??
Smuggle Juliet into Mantua in the back of a wagon or something. Give her a horse and send her away in the dead of night. That literally would have solved everything.
But instead he tells her to PRETEND TO DIE?? What if she had actually died???? What if he got the measurements wrong and she accidentally overdosed?? What if she didn’t drink enough of it and woke up too early? What if Romeo never got the letter telling him about the plot and he found Juliet dead and, in a fit of testosterone-addled grief that only a 16 year old could have, killed himself to be with the girl he loved???? Oh wait.
When the prince is scolding everyone, with Romeo and Juliet’s dead bodies at his feet, Lawrence tells the prince, “If I had fault in this, let me face the consequences under the severest law” (modernized).
IF he had fault??? IF???? He’s entirely at fault!!!
Of course, none of us wanted Juliet to marry Paris (ew). We all wanted her to end up with Romeo.
But in the grand scheme of things, Friar Lawrence is a grown man in a position of authority, who breaks every marriage law in existence and concocts a plan to help these two immature, don’t-know-any-better children get married, then fakes one of their deaths. And it gets them both killed. And then he can’t even fully admit blame?
I do think Lord Capulet is most at fault, but Friar Lawrence having such authority and just abusing it all so recklessly will have me irate until the end of time.
tl;dr: Friar Lawrence broke all the laws and let a 13 year old tell him what to do. He’s an idiot.
Thank you for the ask!! I love talking about this play so much!
