Romeo and Juliet - PARIS
If you couldn't tell from the title, in this post I am going to be talking about the character Paris from Romeo and Juliet. I was recently in a production of Romeo and Juliet and I played Paris. I realise that in a few versions of this story Juliet is very young while Paris is a grown man and their relationship is very much disgusting, however in this version (and many others!) Romeo and Juliet were both sixteen and if Paris was older it would only be by a year or two which is a very small age gap and would make Paris a teenager just like the main couple.
Anyways, I've been looking through Romeo and Juliet content on here and in the few that have mentioned Paris (which there is barely any!) he is hated on very strongly, which isn't completely a bad thing, it just feels like a personal insult because I played him (lol). Now if the people who make those hateful comments are thinking of it as a predatory relationship, the hate is deserved, but otherwise what real reason do you have to hate Paris.
He was a young man who fell in love with Juliet and wanted to marry her... Just like Romeo. Very few people hate him, but everyone hate Paris.
In my production I played Paris thinking that he and Juliet would have interacted a few times prior to their engagement because of their statuses, so thinking about that at least he knew Juliet before wanting to marry her. (ROMEO!) Paris was also genuinely in love with Juliet, and had no idea about Romeo and her, if he did, I doubt he would keep the engagement going. In all of the scenes where the characters were together it was clear that he cared for her and in ACT IV Scene I he respected her privacy and left her to speak alone with Friar Laurence. Yes, he did say some possessive things, however I believe he was genuinely trying to comfort her and because her parents had moved the engagement closer he most likely thought it was because Juliet wanted it to happen, so his "possessive" words about her face being his and such would be something he'd think was alright. Then later when he found out she was "dead" through his words it was clear that her death hurt him, broken his world even, especially after cousin, Mercutio's death. And in Act V when he went to her grave it was clear he was experiencing strong grief and would continue to be in grief for a very long time if not his whole life because of how much he loved her.
To add, when Romeo came into the room where body was it was clear that he was afraid Romeo would do something to defile her body or even Tybalt's. And he most likely (reasonably) blamed Romeo for their deaths as well as Mercutio's. To him, Juliet killed herself because of the pain she was feeling about Tybalt's death. So, when he attacked Romeo to me it was completely understandable. He wanted to protect Juliet from any more harm and had no idea that they loved each other.
Speaking of Paris kind of blaming Romeo for Mercutio's death, in our version of the story Paris and Mercutio were very close, more like siblings than distant cousins and Mercutio and Tybalt were implied to be romantic throughout all of their scenes. So, because of Mercutio and Paris' closeness he would have most likely known about their romantic relationship and although it was technically Tybalt who stabbed Mercutio, Paris would not have believed that Tybalt actually tried to kill his cousin and he knew Romeo killed Tybalt, so what was to stop him from killing Mercutio. This aspect of Paris specifically has to do with our version of the production and therefore I understand why I am most likely the only one to take this into consideration.
So, in conclusion, Paris is not nearly as "evil" or deserving of hate as people make him out to be. Just like all of the other characters in the play he was just as affected by the tragedies of the play. And in the end, he even had to die, not even realising that Romeo and Juliet were in love and married. He died attempting to protect the woman he was in love with who most likely hated him. That is so unfair, and I just want some people to hate him at least a little less.
These are all just my own opinions and you don't have to stop hating him or anything I just felt like talking about this. This also is not a Romeo hate post although I do make him sound pretty bad in some of my points. I honestly love Romeo and his character, and I want to play him one day. I'm also not hating on Juliet for disliking Paris and just not having feelings for him in general, it's fair enough. If you read this and don't one hundred percent disagree with me, thank you.
