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Who Was Responsible For Romeo And Juliet's Death

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Throughout time there have been many tragedies caused by very strong emotions, and one of these emotions in particular is love. This is exactly what caused the death of two star-crossed lovers in William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. You may ask yourself, “Is there any single person who can be held responsible for the deaths of Romeo and Juliet, rather than just an emotion?” Well, the answer is yes. Friar Lawrence was very well responsible for the deaths of Romeo and Juliet for some obvious and overlooked reasons. The forbidden wedding between Romeo and Juliet would have never happened without the consent of Friar Lawrence. First of all he allowed the wedding to happen, even though he knew the problems it may cause, and very well did cause. In the beginning, the friar thought that “...this alliance may so happy prove/ To turn your households' rancor to pure love" (II VI 91-92). This …show more content…

The friar creates this entire plan, which can only be successful if all the stars are aligned properly and everything goes exactly as planned. The friar has to make sure that Romeo finds out about this plan by sending Friar John to deliver the news to Romeo. However, too much trust is placed in Friar John and he fails to deliver the message. Because of this Romeo sees Juliet's sleeping body and believes that she is truly dead and kills himself. Literally moments after Romeo dies Juliet wakes up, sees Romeo, and kills herself. The friar is overwhelmed by guilt and realizes that he has "...a short date of breath" (V iii 229). This could also be a confession that he is to blame. If the friar was not the reason for the two deaths he would not feel bad. Maybe if the friar would have been more careful about the delivery of the message, Romeo would have known that Juliet was sleeping and waited for Juliet to wake up and run off and live happily ever after, rather than killing

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