Juliet's parents insist that she must marry in haste with a paris. A frau lawrence provides a sleeping potion, the idea being that she'll be taken to her ancestor's tomb as if dead and then romeo will come there. When we're in juliet's tomb and she wakes to find romeo dead beside her,. friar lawrence is actually there at that moment in that scene. And rather than helping her in any way, he actually runs away so as not to get into trouble. So he's deeply disappointing at that point. But i think it is also part of this larger picture of the older generation failing to offer guidance and authority in the
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss William Shakespeare's famous tragedy, written in the early 1590s after a series of histories and comedies. His audience already knew the story of the feuding Capulets and Montagues in Verona and the fate of the young lovers from their rival houses, but not how Shakespeare would tell it and, with his poetry and plotting, he created a work so powerful and timeless that his play has shaped the way we talk of love, especially young love, ever since.
The image above is of Mrs Patrick Campbell ('Mrs Pat') as Juliet and Johnson Forbes-Robinson as Romeo in a scene from the 1895 production at the Lyceum Theatre, London
With
Helen Hackett
Professor of English Literature at University College London
Paul Prescott
Professor of English and Theatre at the University of California Merced
And
Emma Smith
Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, University of Oxford
Producer: Simon Tillotson