To persuade a jury that Friar Laurence was responsible for the deaths of Romeo and Juliet, it would be important to establish the following:
First, Friar Laurence was the responsible adult who should have found a tactful way to inform the Capulet and Montague parents of the young lovers' determination to get married. If I were the lawyer, I would emphasize the innocence of both Romeo and Juliet. I would show that they were teenagers who didn't understand the risks they were taking in marrying and didn't understand they were rushing into matrimony completely unprepared. A wiser friar would have known that it is insanity to marry two young people who had only met a day ago. Why was Friar Laurence enabling this? Why wasn't he acting like a grown-up?
Second, I would argue that his marrying them led directly to their deaths because it forced Juliet to take desperate measures to avoid marrying Paris. Why on earth was the friar urging her to take a potion mimicking death? As she made clear in her soliloquy, she was terrified to do so and didn't want to be lying in a crypt surrounded by dead relatives. Why didn't he, rather than suggesting a risky plot, urge her to go to her parents and let them know what she had done? If they had known she was already married, how could they have forced her to marry Paris?
I would further argue that Friar Laurence was willing to allow the young lovers to engage in a high-risk stratagem for the selfish reason of covering up his role in marrying them. I would also argue that anyone with half a grain of sense would know how impulsive Romeo was and take care not to get him mixed up in an ill-conceived plan that so easily could go wrong. Friar Laurence sacrificed the naive and trusting young people to save himself.
Monday, September 19, 2016
How would you persuade a courtroom that Friar Laurence is to blame for Romeo and Juliet's deaths?
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