by A.K. Farrar

Created on: August 05, 2008

Individual Responsibility

On the question: Who is to blame for Romeo and Juliet's death?

What, on the surface, is a simple enough question, is in fact quite a revealing testament to changing moral and social attitudes (and the use made of Shakespeare's texts in the educational world). I would like to start to examine the question from the point of view of the play's original audience and then move on to some thoughts of a more up-to-date nature. Let me state quite clearly at the outset I am with the Elizabethans on this one.

I think the first thing to nail down is that the death of Romeo is a suicide; and the death of Juliet is a suicide: There is no doubt that they were in any way murdered. Unlike the other deaths in the play, where fighting is involved, or the deaths of Lady Montague and the Nurse's daughter, which seem to be natural', Romeo pre-plans his own death and Juliet chooses to follow his example having previously already considered taking her own life. Both have pre-considered the move; both have been instructed, either in the play (in Romeo's case) or in the regular teachings of the church, that suicide is an unforgivable, mortal sin; each is individually aware of the consequences and chooses to kill him/her self.

With this in mind, to even ask the question, who is responsible', in a school in Shakespeare's time would not only suggest a 'weakness of intellect' but indicate a degree of moral laxness suggestive of sever correction.

The dictates of religion would brook no opposition on the absolute sinfulness of suicide: Nor would the Elizabethan divine question the total individual free will exercised in committing the sin. No one is driven' to suicide.

Judas was the model of a suicide he had rejected God and fallen into the sin of despair. Both Romeo and Juliet follow Judas down the path to eternal damnation.

This might sit uncomfortably with the wishes of a modern younger generation, but there would be no questioning, in Elizabethan times, of this view.

In addition to being a sin, suicide was a crime. The horrendous nature of it to the Elizabethan state is reflected in one extreme, but documented case, where the coroner ordered the dead body of a suicide to be buried at a crossroads with a stake driven through its heart.

Elsewhere it is also recorded that stakes were driven through the hearts of suicides and their bodies buried in the field' that is outside holy ground.

Finally, all the goods of a suicide, because it was a crime, were forfeit to the crown.

This

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