#letsgetabsurd

I personally don't know anyone in the fandom who doesn't think that Seibert acts like a dumb shark on a good day, so you're not alone in this;)

@giuliettaluce replied to your post: Friar Lawrence was the action of a peacemaker, while Benvolio was only in words (the part of when he interfered the servants in a sword-fight at the beginning), Lawrence took the action and did it with good intentions. Although it didn’t work at the end, I take Friar Lawrence as a man who only wishes the end of a war and to save the last souls of two warring families.

@letsgetabsurd replied to your post: my lit teacher at school said that technically Friar Lawrence was to blame not because he married them in secret and so on, but because he was incompetent profession-wise: he should have known that Death always takes what was promised and Death shouldn’t be fooled around with (Juliet tricking everyone that she was dead) Though I haven’t given him much thought since that so I don’t really have my own solid opinion. I’d like to know your thoughts about him

@the-princess-of-pirates replied to your post: He had the best in mind when he started but instead he helped solicit a death march of at least four children/young adults. Misguided hope.

Thank you guys so much for sharing your thoughts with me! What you said is really interesting, and here’s how I feel about him:

I think Friar Lawrence is an enigmatic character with a really intense development through the story. He is wise and ignorant, confident and appalled at the same time. His speeches are excessively long, filled with monotony and homiletic expressions. It’s ironic that he criticizes Romeo’s ‘love’ for Rosaline because it ‘did read by rote, that could not spell’, when his own language is limited to received verbal conventions and incessant rhymes. For instance, I always thought that his first speech contrasted entirely with the vivid poetry that Romeo and Juliet had shared only a few seconds ago in the balcony scene. He spends a huge amount of time giving advices to the lovers, especially Romeo, constantly using commonplace expressions. Both R and J rely on his wisdom, his ‘long-experienced time’, and his ‘art’ to find a solution to their problems. Indeed, he knows what people should do—he knows what his books say people should do. But when it comes to putting his own advices into practice, he fails chaotically just like everyone else. Zeffirelli made him trip and almost fall down when he warned Romeo, ‘Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.’ Romeo couldn’t help laughing.

I’ve been trying to find a text post which suggested that all the Friar had to do, after Lord Capulet sold Juliet to Paris (because that’s what he did), was simply say the truth to the Prince. I can’t seem to find the post again, but credits to OP! I thought this was very interesting, and I think the fact that he opted to fake Juliet’s death might prove how scared he is himself. Perhaps he is afraid of the consequences of having married Romeo and Juliet without the consent of those two violent, uncontrolled families that keep murdering people for the slightest of reasons. I think the Friar is just that—an old man who has been living inside his books and among plants all his life, who knows really well how things should be, but who underneath all the received knowledge has a trembling heart and a panicked mind. ‘So smile the heavens upon this holy act,’ he says in the wedding scene, ‘That after-hours with sorrow chide us not.’ He is also full of foreshadowing, just like the lovers. In Zeffirelli’s movie, he is about to stop Juliet from leaving his cell with the potion. He reaches his arm toward her, his mouth about to pronounce the first syllable of her name… but then he lets her go. He covers his mouth with his hand and closes his eyes frustratingly. In Luhrmann’s version, we see him fret and sweat as he waits for the time of Juliet’s awakening to come. He is desperate and vulnerable and not at all the long-experienced man whose ‘art’ could prevent any tragic outcome. The ferocity of the feud is more potent than any kind of wisdom—it prompts even the wise to make bad choices. ’Fear comes upon me,’ he says, ‘O, much I fear some ill unlucky thing!’ This turns him into a very interesting and pitiful character to me, because he is just as lost as Romeo and Juliet. The philosophy, the 'adversity’s sweet milk’ that he mentioned in 3.3 becomes completely useless. I think fear, more than irresponsibility or unconcern, is what makes him leave the tomb after Juliet’s awakening. He quickly comes up with a new plan for her: a convent, something that she rejects entirely. But then he is overcome with fear again: ’I dare no longer stay’. (I love how Zeffirelli made him scream these words over and over again as he ran outside the vault.) Away from his plants and books, he is devastated, drowned in despair, exposed. He has experienced the horrors of Verona and discovered that life is not as simple as his advices presumed, that things like dread and impotency can be really harmful. To me, one of the most heartbreaking lines of the play is what the Third Watchman says: 'Here is a friar that trembles, sighs, and weeps.’ And weeps. The Friar is crying. Perhaps he has realized that his books did not encompass the entirety of human passions. He had warned Romeo that 'they stumble that run fast’, but in the tomb scene he said, 'How oft tonight / Have my old feet stumbled at graves.’ Kenneth Branagh’s 2016 production made him fall on the floor overcome with tears after he delivered his last speech, and not even the Prince’s absolution seemed to have any effect on him.

So I agree with you—his intentions were good, but his handling of the situation was not. I’m really fond of characters who start out as confident and determined, but who are tragically, poetically defeated by chaos. I think expressions like 'I dare no longer stay’ or 'Fear comes upon me’ are really intriguing, coming from a character as resourceful as him and who seemed to be immune to imprudence. There are, on the other hand, other factors that thwarted his plans: namely plague. That’s what didn’t let Friar John deliver the letter to Mantua, and Shakespeare’s audience wouldn’t have found it odd that plague would ruin someone’s life. However, I don’t like reading the play as an unfortunate accident, though you can definitely interpret it like that if you want. I don’t think the real tragedy is caused by Friar John failing to send the letter or Romeo not waiting five more minutes to kill himself. I’m not actually sure Romeo and Juliet would have had their happy ending if they had escaped to Mantua. The Capulets were already planning to poison Romeo. (And, moreover, I think the essence of the play is the restoration of Verona and the triumph of love over hate. It would have been bittersweet to me if Romeo and Juliet had simply run away to another place, escaping from an endless chaos that would have never found a solution. I think the story is Verona’s society itself, and if the lovers had left it behind it would have become sort of pointless. Verona had to destroy Romeo and Juliet and their own destruction had to restore Verona in return.)

I like to compare Arthur Brooke’s prologue to his poem with that of Shakespeare. Both are sonnets and both give away the ending of the story. But Brooke elaborates on how they die:

Love hath inflamed twain by sudden sight, And both do grant the thing that both desire They wed in shrift by counsel of a friar. Young Romeus climbs fair Juliet’s bower by night. Three months he doth enjoy his chief delight. By Tybalt’s rage provoked unto ire, He payeth death to Tybalt for his hire. A banished man he 'scapes by secret flight. New marriage is offered to his wife. She drinks a drink that seems to reave her breath: They bury her that sleeping yet hath life. Her husband hears the tidings of her death. He drinks his bane. And she with Romeus’ knife, When she awakes, herself, alas! she slay'th.

Shakespeare, on the contrary, focuses on why they die. His prologue informs us of the violence of 'fair Verona’, and the 'death-marked love’ that ceased it. So what’s important is not so much how things happen but why. I tend to think of the sleeping potion as a device to situate Juliet in her grave, her 'wedding bed’, ergo allowing both lovers to react to each other’s death by consciously choosing death over life, which turns out to be the only way they have to claim their rejection of the feud. We can partly blame Juliet and Friar Lawrence and their death-faking plan, Friar John and his inability to deliver the letter, Romeo and his impetuous suicide, Balthazar and his too effective service to Romeo, etc. But I think it’s quite unfair, because none of them wished to do any harm. The Friar and Juliet were desperate and scared and Romeo had to 'shake the yoke of inauspicious stars / From this world-wearied flesh’ after the death of the only person who assured that his real identity did not depend on the Montague surname. To me, Romeo and Juliet’s death was not a mistake caused by the Friar’s undelivered letter, but rather it was R and J’s deliberate, individual choice because they could not stand the oppression of their environment. I think that’s more tragic than an accident and more complex than a mistake made by someone as excusably desperate as the Friar. Basically I love everyone and can’t blame them for anything.

Thank you for the ask!

I guess my unpopular opinion is that I don’t like Mark Seibert’s Death? Everybody seems to love him and I just...don’t. He scares me but like, not in the way Death is supposed to scare you, lol

I prefer Deaths who are more quietly, calmly seductive and not aggressive like his Death. I have nothing against him, he’s just not my Death lol

well it's a very human thing to do I guess. you wouldn't have been friends for all those years if there hadn't been good/relatively okay times that you still remember and that probably make you miss her. Just remind yourself that if bad outweighs the good - it's not worth keeping in your life (at least that's what I tell myself about a friendship I ended almost 2 years ago. Minor "I miss her" occur sometimes but still no regrets")

спасибо!

could you share the link?

@letsgetabsurd

Yep, sure! Here’s a link to the website, and here’s an author who translated a lot of Hungarian musical/operetta songs.

However, since I do not speak any Hungarian, I cannot say whether it’s any good or not, but it seems decent and makes sense.

I'm almost 23 too and I just stopped worrying about being immature :D

Nah, I’m pretty mature, always have been, so I never had to worry about that.