Shakespeare Create Suspense In Romeo And Juliet Act 4 Scene 1

This passage from Act 4, Scene 1 plays a significant role to Romeo and Juliet as a whole in the following ways: it furthers the plot, causes dramatic irony, creates suspense, and characterizes the Friar.
In this scene, Friar Lawrence is explaining his plan to keep Juliet with Romeo, by ‘faking’ her death. He gives her a vial of a deep sleep-inducing drug (4.1.93) to take alone, which will put her to ‘a cold and drowsy humour, for no pulse’ (4.1.96) and ‘no warmth, no breath’ (4.1.98) for 42 hours, essentially the appearance of death without dying to avoid marriage to Paris and to stay with Romeo. This act furthers the plot by showing how the plan will play out and additionally creates dramatic irony because the audience knows something that only Juliet and Friar Lawrence know. Ironically, this unknowingness is what leads to Romeo and Juliet’s eventual deaths. Juliet and the Friar’s decision creates suspense for the audience because with a plan of this calibre, there is bound to be something that goes wrong. Juliet even expresses her concern before taking the vial, ‘What if this mixture

At this point, the audience is well aware of the traditional values the Friar is willing to sacrifice in order to bring the Montagues and the Capulets back together, however, they’re not completely aware of the extent the Friar will go to. This shows two sides to the Friar, the lengths at which he is willing to go through to bring the families to peace and the non-traditionality and deceptiveness as ‘a man of god’. The Friar vividly describes death with imagery and Juliet’s bodily reaction after taking the vial (4.1.93-104) which the audience can trace back to his interest in plants and their capabilities as medicine or drugs (2.3.16-30). As the deception of the Friar is revealed in the complexity of his plan for his time, the audience begins to see both sides of the