Friar Lawrence

Question 1

‘two such opposed kings encamp them still in man as well as herbs, grace and rude will’ - friar lawrence, act 2 scene 3

Answer 1

• Friar Lawrence believes that all men have two opposing forces within them - their base desires + god-given goodness (good + evil within)

Question 2

‘therefore love moderately; long love doth so; / too swift arrives as tardy as too slow’ - friar lawrence, act 2 scene 6

Answer 2

• For Friar Lawrence, moderation is the key to happiness, links to delphic maxims ‘nothing in excess’
• The fragmented sentence structure slows down the Friar’s speech which reflects the lesson he is trying to teach the young lovers.
• The repeated semicolons make his words just as slow as the love he idealises
• The consonance of “o” sounds adds to this slow-paced dialogue

Question 3

‘young men’s love then lies not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.’ - friar lawrence, act 2 scene 3

Answer 3

• Friar Lawrence doubts whether Romeo’s love for Juliet is genuine, especially considering he was obsessed with Rosaline a few hours earlier
• The pun on “lies” augments the negativity surrounding the Friar’s sentiment - he doesn’t believe Romeo’s love is genuine, but is comprised of “lies”.

Question 4

‘this alliance may so happy prove to turn your households’ rancour to pure love’ - friar lawrence, act 2 scene 3

Answer 4

• Friar Lawrence pragmatically agrees to marry Romeo + Juliet, believing that their relationship may bring peace to Verona which is his only motivation to this pairing

Question 5

‘wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast’ - friar lawrence, act 2 scene 3

Answer 5

• Friar Lawrence urges caution because he is aware of the extremities of the consequences, yet he doesn’t follow his own advice + his hero complex is partly the reason of Romeo + Juliet’s deaths
• There is parallelism within this exchange between Romeo and the Friar (a shorted phrase, followed by a semi-colon, followed by a longer phrase), yet a disjunct between the content of their messages. * This highlights how, superficially, the two are working towards similar ends, yet for different reasons

Question 6

‘these violent delights have violent ends’ - friar lawrence, act 2 scene 6

Answer 6

• What begins quickly, says friar Lawrence, will end quickly.
• Links to delphic maxims ‘nothing in excess’

Question 7

‘like fire and powder, which as they kiss consume’ - friar lawrence, act 2 scene 6

Answer 7

• Friar Lawrence sees love as potentially explosive + destructive, especially Romeo + Juliet’s love

Question 8

‘be patient, for the world is broad and wide’ - friar lawrence, act 3 scene 3

Answer 8

• Friar Lawrence attempts to comfort Romeo with his philosophical outlook, but this contrasts what friar Lawrence said earlier, ‘they stumble that run fast’

Question 9

‘o then i see that mad men have no ears’ - friar lawrence, act 3 scene 3

Answer 9

• Friar Lawrence sees Romeo as irrational and unable to listen to reason

Question 10

‘art thou a man? thy form cries out thou art; thy tears are womanish, thy wild acts denote the unreasonable fury of a beast’ - friar lawrence, act 3 scene 3

Answer 10

• Although Romeo looks like a man, he is not acting in a manly way - he’s behaving like an emotional woman and a wild animal. this displays the patriarchal society in the 16th century and how a man ought to be
• The Friar asks a rhetorical question to Romeo because he believes that Romeo is not acting like a man.
• In the Elizabethan times, a man showing emotion would have been odd, as those were tendencies of women.
• Throughout the play, the audience has learnt that Romeo is a very emotional man as the audience only sees him when he is heartbroken or in love

Question 11

‘a pack of blessings light upon thy back’ - friar lawrence, act 3 scene 3

Answer 11

• Friar Lawrence argues that Romeo is lucky to have been banished as the other option is death

Question 12

‘o, mickle is the powerful grace that lies / in plants, herbs, stones, and their true qualities’ - friar Lawrence, act 2 scene 3

Answer 12

• The Friar’s religious character is here evinced by his ability to find grace in all things in nature - a reference perhaps to Thomas Aquinas’ (1225 - 1274) Natural Law Theory - that God’s grace is found in all things - which was a central idea for Catholicism.
• The positive lexis (“mickle […] powerful grace […] true”) foregrounds this religiosity and characterises the Friar as an optimistic and spiritual individual

Question 13

‘virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied / and vice itself sometime’s by action dignified’ - friar Lawrence, act 2 scene 3

Answer 13

• The Friar’s sententia highlights the fragility of virtue, a sentiment which is proleptic of the downfall of Romeo and Juliet’s affair.
• This also serves to highlight the Friar’s cautious and rational self, further highlighted when he later cautions Romeo against a hasty marriage

Question 14

‘so smile the heavens upon this holy act / that after-hours with sorrow chide us not!’ friar Lawrence, act 2 scene 6

Answer 14

• Friar Lawrence’s opening lines in this scene immediately imposes a tragic atmosphere for Romeo and Juliet’s marriage.
• He mentions “sorrow” in “after-hours” which signals to the audience the onset of tragedy and is thus proleptic of the coming downfall.
• The Friar seems to be tempting fate with his mere mention of “sorrow”
• Romeo is even more explicit in his tempting of fate (Cf. II.v.7-8)and thus his tragic death is perhaps inevitable (or so it would seem to the superstitious Elizabethan audience who strongly adhered to the ideas of fate).

Question 15

‘you shall not stay alone / till holy church incorporates two in one’ - friar Lawrence, act 2 scene 6

Answer 15

• As the Friar professes to join Romeo and Juliet in marriage, a sense of coupling is foregrounded by the rhyming couplet between “alone” and “one”
• However, the fact that this is not a full rhyme undermines the security of Romeo and Juliet’s coupling from the first

Question 16

‘there on the ground, with his own tears made drunk.’ - friar Lawrence, act 3 scene 3

Answer 16

• This description of Romeo is reminiscent of Romeo in Act 1 when he was still heartbroken over Rosaline.
• His father describes Romeo using natural imagery to show his desolation over Rosaline - “With tears augmenting the fresh morning’s dew”whereas the Friar’s description is more negative.
• He suggests that Romeo is intoxicated so much that he is not acting in a rational manner.
• These contrasting descriptions typify Romeo’s love for Rosaline and Juliet as different, but also the same in the way that it leads Romeo to not behave like himself.
• Secondly, the Friar’s description of Romeo’s tears also reveals the Friar’s disapproval, he makes it clear that Romeo’s behaviour is a fault of his “own”

Question 17

‘you say you do not know the lady’s mind; uneven is the course; I like it not’ - friar Lawrence, act 4 scene 1

Answer 17

• The Friar’s ominous prolepsis is foregrounded in the medial caesura of the second line which makes the line, just like the “course”, uneven.
• The use of the adjective “uneven” would have been a pertinent one to the Elizabethan audience as it is a representation of a disruption of the all-important equilibrium (see Context; Great Chain of Being)

Question 18

‘o, in this love, you love your child so ill / that you run mad seeing that she well. / she’s not well married that lives married long / but she’s best married that dies married young’ - friar Lawrence, act 4 scene 5

Answer 18

• The Friar’s words act to calm the situation but have a deeper meaning
• He seems to be chastising the Capulets for the ill “love” of Juliet - perhaps pointing to her arranged marriage to Paris.
• And his final couplet applies to her marriage to Romeo - her brief affair with Romeo made her happier than a long marriage ever would.
• This dual meaning reflects the Friar’s duplicity in staging Juliet’s death

Question 19

‘I could not send it[…] nor get a messenger to bring it thee, / so fearful were they of infection’ - friar Lawrence, act 5 scene 1

Answer 19

• Friar John’s reason for his failure to deliver the letter seems wildly unusual, and this is suggestive of some greater power working against bringing Romeo and Juliet together
• They were not fated to be together - as the incident of “infection” reveals - and this makes the depiction of their love all the stronger.
• Further, the authorities’ fear of a spurious “infection” led to a real onset of deaths (those of Romeo, Juliet et al.); - this line is thus somewhat proleptic of these deaths and establishes a setting of illness and misery

Question 20

‘now must I to the monument alone […] and keep her at my cell till Romeo come - / poor living corse, closed in a dead man’s tomb!’ - friar Lawrence, act 5 scene 2

Answer 20

• The Friar’s final speech is full of ominous foreshadowing; his solitude (“alone”) creates a sense of isolation soon to be felt by Romeo and Juliet.
• His comment that Juliet must stay alive till Romeo arrives is given gruesome reality when she does stay alive until Romeo arrives, but kills herself on seeing his body.
• This mention of Juliet “clos’d in a dead man’s tomb” represents the repression of Juliet by the patriarchal society in which she lives.
• All her actions (who she is to marry, how she will marry, how she will meet Romeo) are orchestrated by patriarchal traditions, and the Friar (perhaps unknowingly) acknowledges this here.