Loyalty In Romeo And Juliet

1389 Words3 Pages

What if you were torn between loyalty to your family and your true love? This is what the characters in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet are dealing with. Romeo and Juliet are star crossed lovers in Verona that belong to enemy houses, forbidding their love. They make many questionable decisions swayed by loyalty that eventually lead to their deaths. The death of Romeo and Juliet was affected by Friar Lawrence’s plan, Juliet’s unsupportive parents, and Romeo slaying Tybalt, which demonstrate that while loyalty can be righteous, it can also be destructive. Many decisions made in this play could have been easily avoided if it were in the absence of loyalty. One character that had most vital actions and presence affecting the survival of Romeo and Juliet was Friar Lawrence. Friar …show more content…

Juliet’s parents were pushing her to marry Paris as loyalty to their family status. But she refused their wishes, upsetting Capulet: “An you be mine, I’ll give you to my friend./ An you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in the streets,/ For ,by my soul, I’ll ne’er acknowledge thee,” (3.5. 203-206). Capulet is shaming Juliet and betrays her by trying to force her to marry Paris. Here we see a solidifying moment in Juliet’s loyalty to Romeo after her parents had lost her trust. Her parents have betrayed her by putting the loyalty to their family status before their loyalty to her happiness. From here Juliet flees with rage to Friar Lawrence as a last hope to reunite with Romeo. From this moment on the tragic events of the play start to happen. Juliet runs to the Friar, impatiently awaiting a plan and agrees to one without consideration of its flaws. Everything from this point on could have been avoided if Juliet’s parents heard her out and understood her situation. Then, Juliet would not have been forced to devise a plan around her parents to go see

Open Document