Act IV: #3

Of the characters in Act IV, I feel the most sympathy for Juliet. I feel the pain of Juliet's death in all of the characters like Lord Capulet and Lady Capulet and Nurse, but Juliet, to me, seems to be going through the most emotinal distraught.


Not only does poor Juliet have to go through the recent fight she had with her parents, but she is now having to pretend she is dead in front of her whole family just so she doesn't have to get married to her parents choice of a husband, Paris. Juliet has come to Friar Lawrence for help. She says to him, " God join'd my heart with Romeo's, thou our hands; and ere this hand, by thee to Romeo's seal'd, shall be the label to another deed, or my true heart with treacherous revolt turn to another, this shall slay them both" (Shakespeare, 232). Juliet is trying to expalin to Friar Lawrence that she will never marry Paris, because she and Romeo are already married, and she would kill herself before she would ever marry Paris.


Friar Lawrence feels Juliet's sadness, and is arbitrating what he could do for her. Then he thinks of a possible resolution to Juliet's problem. He tells Juliet, " Now, when the bridegroom in the morning comes, to rouse the from thy bed, there art thou dead. Then, as the manner of our country is, in thy best robes covered on thy bier thou shall be borne to that same ancient vault, where all the kindred of the Capulet's lie. In the mean time, against  thou shall wake, shall Romeo by my letters know thy drift"(236). Friar Lawrence has made a plan to get Juliet and Romeo together without being caught so they can run away to Mantua.  The paln involves Juliet drinking a remedy to put her in deep sleep, and she does seem a little cautious that Friar Lawrence might have given this remedy to her out of spite, because it could be a poison. However, this idea didn't bother Juliet much, so she was very supple about the genius idea. 


In this situation, however, I think that, even though she was asleep the whole time, Juliet must have felt some sort of guilt  immoderatly  pretending to be dead so her family had to suffer from her loss. I wonder  if she knew that out of all her family members, Nurse would be the one that was constantly inundated with tears for the child she loved. For this main reason, I feel sympathy for Juliet. Not only does she have to leave her family, but she has to leave the place she grew up in, and she has to go hide in her family's tomb, just so her husband could see her.