Friar Lawrence, The Renaissance Man

helping his own family escape the mourning over Tybalt. Romeo has equally good intentions when he gets in the way during Mercutio's final fight with Tybalt. Benvolio has good intentions when he takes Romeo to the party where he meets his fellow "star-crossed lover." Being good and virtuous is not enough; the plan has to work. In many respects, the theme is Machiavellian, as he with the most power takes the place of he with the most virtue and, as Barnett says in the introduction to Doctor Faustus, the active life replaces the contemplative.
          The latter of the two lines above even explains that vice can be a good thing if the action makes it so. In a sort of pre-existential phrase, Friar Lawrence explains that a person is what he or she does and nothing more. The Friar does have good intentions, and the Prince may simply agree at the end of the play that he did, through his dishonest vice, end the feud between the two families, a dignified conclusion that the Prince could bring with threats or power. The Friar, in doing so, ends a feud that took two of the Prince's relatives (Mercutio and Paris). I believe it is most important that Shakespeare allows the holy ghostly father to speak these lines rather than Mercutio, who is established as a Renaissance figure during the Queen Mab speech.
          Romeo follows the active example set by the Friar and by Mercutio when he says Juliet's love has made him weak and womanish before throwing off his contemplative mask and sticking his active sword in Tybalt. Romeo moves from being the passive character of medieval times (the play's setting) to an active character of the Renaissance (Shakespeare's time). The most interesting level of this play now that most of us are tired of the love interest may be the conflicting conclusions that audience members may draw: would Shakespeare still hold the Friar and his ways to be holy or did he believe that this new humanistic period would be the end of virtuous civilization? And if the audience members apply this to our time, what do they think? Of course, they don't have to think at all. Why think when the internet is full of...free essays for those with better things to do than thinking for themselves.
     

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