Romeo and Juliet (Lecture 27/6/12)

CHARACTER ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

I have read Romeo and Juliet several times but I have never fully explored the intricacies of all its dynamic characters. In class, we discussed two characters that I hadn’t previously paid much attention to, Capulet and his wife. After our discussion, I realized that their role went beyond impeding the progress of Romeo and Juliet’s relationship. Capulet and Lady Capulet comprise their own small story. Underlying emotions, such as love for his daughter and yearning for a son further motivates Capulet’s actions. Lady Capulet’s actions imply an underlying bitterness about her past and her marriage to Capulet. Our discussion in class about these subtleties intrigued me and inspired me to seek a deeper understanding of lesser known characters. I am going to conduct an in-depth character analysis of three of the minor characters of Romeo and Juliet that I find most fascinating: Friar Laurence, Juliet’s nurse, and Lady Capulet. I will conclude my analyses by investigating the ways these characters represent important values or themes of Romeo and Juliet.  

Friar Laurence

Milo O'Shea plays Friar Laurence in the 1968 version of Romeo and Juliet.

Friar Laurence is a complex character. Though he is the only representation of the Christian religion in the play, he is neither entirely good nor bad. He is kindhearted, generous, and sympathetic to Romeo and Juliet’s plight. However, his intentions do not derive merely from these qualities. One of his motivations for marrying Romeo and Juliet is to end the feud between their families that plagues Verona. After learning of Romeo’s desire to marry Juliet, he tells him, “In one respect I’ll thy assistant be;/For this alliance may so happy prove/To turn your households’ rancour to pure love” (90-93).  Despite being a noble cause, it is at least in part politically driven and requires an unusual amount of manipulation, scheming, and deception for a religious figure. He marries Romeo and Juliet in secret. Once Romeo has been banished for murdering Tybalt, he hides him within the church. On the other hand, he is at times the voice of reason in the play, as when he tells Romeo to be merciful for be banishment and that he is not dead (24-28). Even once Romeo has been banished and all hopes for uniting the families are lost, Friar Laurence continues to aid the lovers. He devises a plan to simulate Juliet’s death so that Romeo and she can get out of town safely. His motives for doing so are complex. Likely, these actions reflect the goodness of the friar’s heart. The friar sacrifices his own safety in part because he knows the greatness, rarity, and value of love. More importantly though, I think he realizes that it was he who, in the name of the Church, married the two lovers, and it is partly his responsibility to ensure the sacredness of the marriage – he cannot marry Juliet to Paris because he has already married her to Romeo. But ultimately, the friar’s last words support a sympathetic reading of his character. In describing the final events that led to the deaths of Romeo, Juliet, and Paris, he is straightforward and penitent. He tells the prince all he knows and prostrates himself before the law. The prince responds simply, “We still have known thee for a holy man” (269). This response implies that though the friar’s actions were illegal, his intentions were virtuous and respectable. This reading of the friar aligns with the understanding of Romeo and Juliet that I presented in my first short paper, in which I presented it as a play about the importance of valuing and cherishing love and forgiveness above all else. 

Juliet's Nurse and Lady Capulet

 
Pat Heywood plays Juliet's nurse and Natasha Perry plays Lady Capulet in the 1968 version of Romeo and Juliet.

Juliet’s nurse and Lady Capulet serve as foils to one another. Both are mother figures to Juliet, but they contrast in significant ways. Where the nurse is crass and comic, Lady Capulet is stern and formal. While Lady Capulet is Juliet’s birth mother, Juliet’s nurse has spent much more time with Juliet and they have a much more intimate relationship. In class, we discussed scene three of act one, which is a conversation between the three women that reveals the dynamics of their relationship with one another. The nurse tells a lengthy story from Juliet’s childhood, thus illuminating their intimacy. Lady Capulet appears especially formal in speech and cross in manner when she follows this humorous and personal tale with a rash proposition for her daughter to marry Paris – something Juliet certainly does not expect or desire. Lady Capulet then deviates from her formally phrased question to inappropriately describe the Paris’s attractive physical qualities. To offer another contrast, the nurse adds sarcastically that Paris is “a flower, in faith, a very flower,” (80). Here, the nurse snidely questions Paris’s sexuality, which goes unnoticed by Juliet’s unperceptive and aloof mother. The contrast between their relationships with Juliet is boldly drawn – the nurse assists Juliet in her marriage to Romeo whereas Juliet’s mother remains oblivious to her daughter’s inner turmoil until Juliet’s shocking suicide. These contrasts between Juliet’s role models relate to the theme of women’s roles that runs throughout Romeo and Juliet. With a warm personality and unpretentious manner, the nurse represents the lower class workingwoman of 1590s England. The nurse often refers to her loving relationship with her deceased husband, whereas Lady Capulet never discusses Capulet but instead spends an inordinate amount of time describing the beauty of young Paris. While the nurse wants Juliet to take time to find someone she loves as much as the nurse loved her husband, Lady Capulet seems to have had an unsatisfactory arranged marriage with Capulet and wants Juliet to marry Paris regardless of considerations of love. With love as the base of the nurse’s relationship with her husband, they serve as a much better role model of marriage for Juliet than do Capulet and Lady Capulet. Judging only by the aforementioned positive qualities, Shakespeare’s depiction of the nurse is complimentary to the large portion of the audience that is lower class. However, the depiction of the nurse as a blundering, crass comic figure also pokes fun at the roughness of the lower class. Despite this unkind humor, the nurse remains the sentimental, sympathetic character and a representation of nurturing motherhood and love whereas Lady Capulet is cold and bitter. Their characterizations as such result from an emphasis on the importance of love in marriage.  The nurse’s cheeriness and Lady Capulet’s cold bitterness correlate to their marriages and reflect the human need for intimacy and the utmost importance of love.

Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet. The Norton Shakespeare. Ed.

Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2009. 925-1000.

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