Friar Laurence In Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet

Shakespeare is very well known for making very good plays. One of the things that makes his plays so good is how unique his characters are. One play that has a good example of this is “Romeo and Juliet”. Romeo and Juliet is a story about two lovers who are on opposite sides of a family feud. Even though the families are fighting, Romeo and Juliet still love each other and want to marry each other. But they encounter many challenges in this plan, with things like Romeo getting banished, Juliet having an arranged marriage, and more. One very important character in the play is Friar Laurence. The friar ends up both helping and hurting Romeo and Juliet’s plans for marriage and love. In “Romeo and Juliet”, Shakespeare illustrates that the character

This is to say that what he tries to do often backfires. To see this, we have to first look at his intentions. When Friar is first introduced into the story, he is mad at Romeo. This is because he is both surprised and mad at Romeo for how quickly he switched from loving Rosaline to Juliet. When Romeo asks the Friar to marry him and Juliet, the Friar initially does not want to because Romeo has not met Juliet for long enough. However, Firar eventually agrees to do so. He says that he will do this because, “For this alliance may so happily prove, To turn your households' rancor to pure love(Shakespeare 2.3.91-92).” That sentence is basically saying that he will marry them because he thinks that it will end the feud between the families. Because of how dangerous the family feud has been, the Friar believes that it is important enough to have Romeo marry Juliet. While this is what the Friar hopes will happen, it is not necessarily what will happen because of their marriage. Moreover, the marriage ends up doing more harm than good. All in all, the Friar hopes that this marriage will be a good idea because it will stop the feud between the two