The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet

Who is Responsible for the Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet? In William Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, many of the authority figures in the play are responsible for Romeo’s and Juliet’s deaths. While Romeo asserts that he is “fortune’s fool” and while the chorus tells the audience that these are “star-crossed lovers” whose love was doomed from the beginning, the reality of the situation is that the Prince, the fathers of the two families, and the priest all bear some responsibility in the tragic outcome.

The context of the play is very important for understanding how the authority figures could have prevented the tragic ending. When the play begins, there is a tremendous brawl in the streets that is started by the House of Montague and the House of Capulet. The Prince arrives to stop the brawling and restore peace—and in doing so he drops a subtle hint at his own failing in this story: “Three civil brawls bred of an airy word / By thee, old Capulet, and Montague, / Have thrice disturbed the quiet of our streets” (1.1.91-93). The Prince admits that this fighting is not the first time it has happened—nor even the second. It is the third time these families have caused a riot in the streets of Verona, and even still the Prince is not doing anything to check it other than making threats. Why he has allowed the fighting to go on so long or even to reach this extent. The expression goes: three strikes and you’re out. Yet here the Prince is giving the families one more and demonstrating his own laxity when it comes to governance and instilling the rule of law. Instead of standing up to the families, he lets them off with a warning. Yet by going easy on them all this time, he is showing a dangerous passive-aggressive streak, so that when death does occur (Mercutio killed by Tybalt and then Tybalt killed by Romeo), the Prince refuses to hear any talk of peace or mercy. He goes from being soft, soft, soft to being hard and cruel—which only further exacerbates the problems and the tension.

Of course, the fathers of the two families are equally to blame as well. Montague calls for his sword in the first scene instead of calling for peace, and Capulet pushes his daughter into a hasty marriage that she does not want to enter into. He is so tyrannical and full of rage towards her and anyone who gets in his way that all—even Juliet’s nurse and confessor fail to intercede on her behalf for fear of what my befall them. Juliet’s priest, indeed, bears a large responsibility for the tragedy that occurs, since he is the one who married the two in secret in the first place.

In fact, the priest is the one who should have cleared the air upon overseeing the wedding of Romeo and Juliet. Instead, he cowers in fear. Friar Lawrence even shows that he is willing to marry the two lovers to bring about a peace between the two feuding families when he says in Act 2, scene 3: “In one respect I’ll thy assistant be, / For this alliance may so happy prove / To turn your households’ rancor to pure love” (2.3.97-99). So his intentions are good and noble—but by the end of the play, instead of telling the Prince that Juliet is already married to Romeo and that she cannot, therefore, marry Paris, he decides to try a potion that will make everyone think Juliet is dead until he can find a “better” time to spring the news of her marriage to a Montague. The priest’s deceit is what seals the deal and leads directly to Romeo’s despair and suicide followed shortly thereupon by Juliet’s.
In conclusion, the authority figures in Shakespeare’s play bear the responsibility for the tragedy. The Prince did not insist on order from the beginning. The fathers of the two families did not help. And the priest, who had good intentions, failed to follow through on them—and thus the play ends in death.

Works Cited

Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. http://www.folgerdigitaltexts.org/html/Rom.html