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The Brevity of Friar Laurence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Bertrand Evans
Bertrand Evans*
Affiliation:
University oe California Berkeley 4
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Extract

Critical comment on Romeo and Juliet in the past hundred and seventy-five years has made two of Shakespeare's alleged errors in that play loom above all others. These I shall call the trespasses of Friars Laurence and John: Friar Laurence, it is said, talks too much and thus detains the final curtain; Friar John enters a house suspected of contagion and, much too conveniently, is detained. My general purpose here is to examine the two problems within a single frame, for I believe they must be so reviewed if the validity of long-standing charges is to be fully tested. Furthermore, although the incident of Friar John is the graver “fault”, my review of that problem is undertaken in part as a means of approach to the lesser “fault”, the speech of Friar Laurence. Refined, then, my primary purpose is to focus some more light on the latter problem. Although the ground is widely familiar, I shall first summarize and briefly document critical opinion on each problem in order to define the issues sharply and to make assurance doubly sure that no reader will suppose that I have invented them.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 65 , Issue 5 , September 1950 , pp. 841 - 865
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1950

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References

1 E. E. Stoll, Shakespeare Studies (1927), p. 126. See also G. P. Baker, Shakespeare as a Dramatist (1907), pp. 209–210, 263; H. Granville-Barker, Prefaces to Shakespeare, Sec. Ser. (1930), p. 301.

2 H. Ulrici, Shakespeare's Dramatic Art, trans. L. Dora Schmitz, p. 397.

3 Romeo and Juliet, New Variorum, p. 451.

4 Space does not permit adequate representation of the importance assigned by critics to this incident. To stand for many, I quote three more commentators: R. G. Moulton, The Moral System of Shakespeare (1903), p. 61 : “So the three lie side by side … and the triple tragedy has all been brought about by that accidental detention of Friar John”; R. M. Alden, Shakespeare (1922), p. 245: “When they seem nearest deliverance, Shakespeare unresistingly follows his source in making the final stroke of fate one of the merest chance, so completely unrelated to the principal action that the tragic plot seems actually to be forgotten or destroyed”; Hazelton Spencer, The Art and Life of William Shakespeare (1940), p. 220: “Fate manifests its dread control in the mere mischance of an undelivered letter, and Romeo and Juliet is more pathetic than powerful.”

5 Shakespeare Commentaries, p. 223; cf. also pp. 226–228; also see Tieck, New Variorum, p. 449; Ulrici, op. cit., p. 383. The list is very long, from Coleridge, Lectures and Notes (London: Bell and Sons, 1885), p. 237, to H. E. Cain, “Romeo and Juliet: a Reinterpretation”, SAB, xxii (1947), 163–192, the latter essay arguing that Romeo's tragic flaw is anger— “wild-eyed fury.”

6 Op. cit., p. 116: “Shakespeare cleverly conceals his employment of a casual accident by only telling us about it and by not showing us the actual interference with the messenger who bore it.” Brander Matthews is the most distressed of all critics on this point, claiming chance, fate, tragic flaw, almost anything he can grasp as cause of the catastrophe, in what seems a desperate effort to rmnimize the importance of the one accident. Note, e.g., p. 110: “… hero and heroine alike … have wills of their own and know their own minds and are bent on having their own way. They are not only wilful, but headstrong, and so they rush straight to their doom.”

7 This seems obvious. Nevertheless, R. M. Smith, “Three Interpretations of Romeo and Juliet”, SAB, xxiII (1948), 60–77, after summarizing three “conflicting interpretations” which prevail among critics (that R&J is a tragedy of Social Justice, that it is a tragedy of Character and Poetic Justice, and that it is a tragedy of Fate or Fortune), rejects them one by one and concludes : “Do we not have in Romeo and Juliet what we may call a nicely balanced play of all these forces?” No, I do not think we have; this is to out-Brander Matthews.

8 All references are to the Kittredge (1940) ed. I have sometimes italicized a word or a phrase to indicate the emphasis I read in the line.

9 Such data will be furnished in a volume I have now in progress on the plays.

10 In fact, I doubt that the difference lies in the unawareness of the participants; it lies rather in the degree of awareness of the audience. When the servants act, they are as unaware as later Capulel is when he acts; the degree of unawareness is the same on both sides. But when the servants act, the audience's awareness exists only by benefit of the Prologue; when Capulet acts, of course, the audience's awareness is full and clear, for all the details of the situation have then been laid open through scenes.

11 Cf. Coleridge, op. cit., p. 101 : “On his [Mercutio'sJ fate hangs the catastrophe of the tragedy.” Most critics since have made the same observation.

12 For this insight—and for many more—into a seemingly trivial but really significant occurrence I am indebted to H. Granville-Barker, pp. 21–22 : “Paris is actually at the door, when, with a sudden impulse, Capulet recalls him—and by that sudden impulse, so lightly obeyed, the tragedy is precipitated.”

13 Brooke's characterization of Paris afforded neither help nor hindrance. Brooke first mentions Paris after Tybalt is slain, and he is praised only in the Capulets' recommendation of him to Juliet: “His youthfull yeres, his fayreness, and his port and semely grace, / With curious wordes she payntes before her daughters eyes,/And then with store of ver-tues prayse she heaves him to the skyes.” Hazlitt, Shakespeare's Library, i, 157. If anything, this recommendation might have tempted Shakespeare to make Paris a cad.

14 There is not space to prove that Tybalt belongs with “the others”; yet Tybalt belongs with them. Though hot-headed, he is never villainous; he acts for the best as he knows the best, and is as blameless in intent as Benvolio or Paris. Juliet's outburst (in, ii) on hearing of his death is alone, in my opinion, warrant for his inclusion with the others.

15 The abbreviated and garbled speech as printed in the First Quarto has Friar Laurence report Balthasar's action; that could not be, since the audience hears the whole conversation of the Friar with Balthasar which precedes the Friar's speech, and Balthasar does not mention his action in that conversation. There is no other means by which the Friar could have learned.

16 Othello, v, ii, 198: “01 01 01”