Friar Lawrence: a moderate world view
Despite his best intentions, Friar Lawrence devises a plan that involves considerable risk-taking, beginning with the magic potion that Juliet must drink. Ironically, the chain of events undermines his best intentions. Whilst he preaches moderation and restraint, his plan gives rise to extreme actions. The Friar’s wise counsel, “they stumble that run fast” and his desire to ensure that all the elements are appropriately balanced, soon comes unstuck.
Significantly, his view about moderation and balance reflects Shakespeare’s commonplace idea that the world is harmoniously organised for good reason and that love and hatred and “grace” and “rude will” are perfectly poised. He believes that it is important to respect this divine and natural order and in doing so the properties and “true qualities” will complement each other according to their appropriate use.
During his initial soliloquy, the Friar tends lovingly to his plants, which he collects to make medicines. As he fills his “osier cage” with both “baleful weeds” and “precious-juiced flowers”, the Friar reflects upon the delicate balance between all plants from “nature’s mother’s” tomb, which is also her “burying grave”. Using the analogy of the natural world, he notes that a disturbance to this natural balance has malign consequences. He believes that many plants have both medicinal and poisonous qualities, (“poison hath residence, and medicine power”) but the poison often takes over if it has been abused or misapplied. For example, mickle is both a “powerful grace” that is found in many plants but is also quite “vile”, particularly if “strained” from its “fair use”.
Friar Lawrence believes that this harmony can be replicated in human lives so long as passion and desire are appropriately restrained. When an element takes over, such as mickle which is both a “powerful grace” and “vile” if “strained” from its “fair use”, then, so too, can human nature be easily corrupted from its decent and honourable course. He notes that “virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied, And vice sometime by action dignified”. Such comments foreshadow the simmering feud between both Tybalt and Mercutio, who misapply the notions of courage and honour, with disastrous consequences for the lovers. “In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will” and where poisonous elements take over, “the canker death eats up that plant”.
THE TRAGEDY is a catalogue of errors originating in Friar Lawrence’s ill-hatched plan.
The plan appears simple, but it is full of risks.
- Friar Lawrence’s scheme is not well planned and is perhaps too sophisticated for the young lovers. Juliet blindly places her faith in Friar Lawrence and when the plan backfires both Romeo and Juliet are too young, naive and innocent to think of other remedies.
- Friar Lawrence instigates the dangerous plan that has disastrous consequences, although love and peace are his main aims. He states that “this this alliance may so happy prove to turn your households’ rancour to pure love’. Friar organises the risk-laden scheme which seeks to avoid Juliet’s hasty marriage to Paris.
- It encourages Juliet to deceive her parents. She feigns death which leads to disaster upon the lack of communication with Romeo. Friar Lawrence’s scheme is not well planned and is perhaps too sophisticated for the young lovers. Juliet blindly places her faith in Friar Lawrence and when the plan backfires both Romeo and Juliet are too young, naive and innocent to think of other remedies.
- He does not have any back-up plans. Friar John is held up by the authorities. He is unable to give Romeo the letter about Friar Lawrence’s scheme because he and another monk were delayed by the authorities and quarantined. (“Where the infectious pestilence did reign, Seal’d up the doors, and would not let us forth”.)
- Friar Lawrence fails to inform, Romeo’s servant Balthasar, who hurries to Romeo with the news that Juliet is dead. He begs Romeo to show patience, which may have led to a different outcome. Pale and wildly and passionately impetuous, Romeo decides to go straight to her tomb.
- When he learns about her “death” Romeo rushes to buy poison. In front of Juliet’s body he remains with their memories. He remembers the memory of her kiss: “Death, that hath suck’d the honey of thy breath.” After his death by “true apothecary”, Juliet wakes up and kills herself with a “dagger”
Sample paragraphs
Despite his best intentions Friar Lawrence fails the lovers because of the risk-laden plan that sets in chain a tragic turn of events. Whilst Friar Lawrence is careful to ensure that passions are kept in check, he also recognises the value of the unity of Romeo and Juliet and believes it can end the feud. From the beginning he echoes Shakespeare’s view that love and peace are his main aims. He states that “this alliance may so happy prove to turn your households’ rancour to pure love’. To his misfortune, his plan is not only risk-laden owing to the age of the lovers, but is also subversive as it undermines Capulet’s authority. Furthermore, Friar Lawrence does not have any back-up plans for Friar John who fails to deliver the letter to Romeo owing to the outbreak of the plague. When Friar John tells Friar Lawrence that “so fearful were they of infection” at the border that he could not “get a messenger” through, Friar Lawrence anticipates the worst. He realises that “the neglecting it May do much danger”. Moreover, the Friar fails to anticipate that Balthasar, Romeo’s servant, may despatch the news to Romeo, who becomes stricken with grief. Balthasar’s alarming news that “her (Juliet’s) body sleeps in capels’ monument and her immortal part with angels lives” leaves Romeo distraught and in the absence of a letter from the Friar, he hastily determines his final plan. “Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee tonight”. As a consequence, if Friar Lawrence admits “if aught in this Miscarried by my fault” it is because he did not anticipate the unforeseen events.
However, to some extent Friar Lawrence is the only adult who truly understands the depth of their passion and for this reason knows that only an extreme plan will foil Capulet’s determination to marry Juliet. Both hers and Romeo’s determination to live together leaves a deep impression upon him, and, as the herbologist knows, “virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied, And vice sometime by action dignified”. In his regard, Friar Lawrence becomes the target of both Romeo’s and Juliet’s desperate pleas for help as they realise the extent to which the feud is tearing them apart. Firstly, Romeo “offers to stab himself” and using a metaphoric reference to the body as a mansion he appeals to Friar Lawrence to guide his hand: “In what vile part of this anatomy, Doth my name lodge? Tell me, that I may sack the hateful mansion.” Likewise, Friar Lawrence is also pressured by Juliet, who, in a similar mirror event, also threatens to kill herself if the marriage to Paris proceeds. Friar Lawrence later explains: “she with wild looks bid me devise some mean To rid her from this second marriage, Or in my cell there would she kill herself”:. For this reason, Friar Lawrence is not the one to fail the lovers.. Rather, it is the parents;’ wishes coupled with the feuding warriors who disrupt the lovers’ and the Friar’s best intentions. In fact, the ending vindicates their plans, whereby the families finally unite in their grief.
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