I had read Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare for a few times and always thought that only their parents were guilty in their death as they did not know them to be together. But when I read this story again, I found out that there were other people whose decisions played a role in the death of Romeo and Juliet. Many people think that only Romeo and Juliet made a wrong decision which led to such a terrible end of the story, but this is not true. In this story many people interfered in the relations of these poor young people and tried to decide their lives.
But it is possible to speak about three characters who made a great mistake with their decisions. They are Friar Lawrence, the Nurse of Juliet and the parents of Juliet.
The decision of the parents
If to analyze the attitude of the parents to Juliet, they treated her terribly. They did not care about her wishes and her feeling. When they decided that she had to marry Paris, it was their greatest mistake. It was a really bad decision. She did not love him, she was so young and innocent. She could not take this fact and wanted to avoid this marriage anyway. It pushed her to take the poison to pretend dead. Juliet was shocked when she was told to become a wife of that man. If her mom took care about her, if her mom listened to her, she would not be so stubborn and would not follow only her desires. She would talk to her daughter and understood earlier that her daughter would be unhappy in that marriage. But her mom supported the decision of her father and was completely on his side. Only when she saw her daughter dead, she began to realize all the tragedy. For example, “But one, poor one, one poor and loving child, But one thing to rejoice and solace in, And cruel death hath catch'd it from my sight!”(Shakespeare). But everything could be avoided if Lady and Lord Capulet were interested in thoughts and feeling of their daughter and not only wanted to get their own interest from the marriage with Paris.
The decision of the Nurse
Another important character in this story was the Nurse of Juliet. She knew about the affair between Juliet and Rome and at first she supported Juliet. Juliet was lonely with her feelings and fears and the Nurse was a person whom she could trust to, but the Nurse changed her mind and decided to convince Juliet to forget Romeo. It was her wrong decision. She knew how much Juliet loved Romeo and continued to advise her to leave him and to marry Paris. She did so because she wanted to be good for Lady Capulet and she also did not care about Juliet’s feeling. For example, “. I think it best you married with the county. O, he's a lovely gentleman! Romeo's a dishclout to him; an eagle, madam, I think you are happy in this second match !”( Shakespeare). Juliet was very sad as she did not have any person to share her worries and she decided to get some piece of advice from another character, who made a wrong decision too – Friar Lawrence.
The role of Friar Lawrence in the story of love
Friar Lawrence was the priest and he decided to help two young people to be together. He decided to give Juliet some poison to pretend dead. When she was in trance and Romeo saw her dead, Friar Lawrence did not tell him the truth about her death. If Romeo knew that his Juliet was alive, but just in trance, he did not kill himself, but lazy and stupid Friar did not think about the consequences. For example: “A dateless bargain to engrossing death!--Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide! Thou desperate pilot, now at once run onThe dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark! Here's to my love! Thy drugs are quick.--Thus with a kiss I die.” (Shakespeare).
Friar was unwatchful because instead of going to Romeo and telling him the truth waited till Romeo would get a letter. He had to give the letter to Romeo face to face to avoid confusion, but he was lazy and decided just to send Romeo the letter where he wrote about their plan with Juliet’s “death”. It was his great mistake-his bad decision.
Conclusion
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Works Cited
Shakespeare, William, “Romeo and Juliet.” Learnlibrary,. Web. 21 Jan. 2017
