“A glooming peace this morning with it brings, The sun for sorrow will not show his head. Go forth and talk of these sad things; Some shall be pardoned, and some punishèd” This quote from Prince Escalus, a character from William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, poses an interesting thought. Who will be punished for the death of these two unfortunate lovers? Well, the one to blame for this incident is none other than the Prince himself. Throughout the play, Prince Escalus is seen as a distant character, only appearing three times. Rather than being involved in the dispute between many of his subjects, the Prince avoids them and only shows up when he absolutely has to. In fact, had the Prince been more involved, this entire situation could have been avoided in the first place. Prince Escalus only makes an appearance three times. Once in the beginning of the play when a fight breaks out between the servants of the two houses, a second time when Tybalt is slain by …show more content…
In the prologue, the readers find out that the reason for the feud was because “civil blood [made] civil hands unclean.” This means that a fight had already broken out between the two houses. If there had been a fight before but the issue was still there, then the Prince either did not know about the problem or didn’t do very much to try and help the subjects work through it. It is most likely the latter, which shows that the Prince has dealt with the two families before but hasn’t truly tried to resolve the conflict. At the end of the play, when the Prince finds Romeo and Juliet dead, he says that “some shall be pardoned, and some punishèd.” The Prince’s statement is extremely vague, and that shows that the Prince has no idea who to punish yet. Furthermore, the Prince is using a tactic known as “blame shifting”- he is pushing the blame away from himself and onto the others that were present for the