As the turning point in the play, Act 4 gives us three different authorities, all asserting their power. The power they invoke is, analogically, the same as the playwright’s.
Each authority wants to write the script for the rest of the play’s action.
Shakespeare contrasts the desire for agency with the repeated theme of fate. Juliet tells Paris, “What must be shall be.” The Friar agrees, and he’s supposed to be the voice of spiritual reason! The conflict, then, is between two transcendent sources for visible authority: a personal God or impersonal fate. The visible rulers in this act are as follows.
- Paris – the fiancée. He talks to Juliet as though they are already married: “my lady and my wife!” He asserts the rights a husband has over a wife by taking a kiss and scolding her for ruining her face with tears, which he calls “mine.” In short, Paris is this act’s substitute Romeo. He wants to fold Juliet into a new family with himself as the husband and visible authority.
- The Friar – the churchman. Juliet comes to the Friar ostensibly for confession. This is a rightful part of The Friar’s authority. Neither a husband, father nor county Prince can hear confessions and forgive sins. The danger comes when the Friar begins plotting something for Romeo and Juliet far outside the bounds of the church’s authority. He sides with the lovers, two young people who have already turned idolatrous in their passion. He goes against the Prince, the Prince’s kinsman (Paris), and the Capulets and Montagues. Consequently, the Friar must lie to the Capulets and Montagues while serving as priest following Juliet’s supposed death. He spins a yarn to them that “the heavens” have taken Juliet as a punishment for “some ill.” The Friar baptizes his actions with rhetoric that isn’t particularly Christian. He warns, “Move them [the heavens] no more by crossing their high will.” The Friar uses spiritual judgment to enforce his authority because the threat of negative sanctions from the civil government has proven incapable of curbing familial power.
- Capulet – the father. We never see Capulet happier than when Juliet tells him, “Henceforward I am ever ruled by you.” Of course, she’s lying to his face, and in the next scene, she takes the poison that makes her appear dead. Capulet asserted authority over Tybalt in Act 1 and over Juliet in Act 3. Both assertions were rhetorical bluster. Neither accomplished actual submission. Here, he gets concession, but it’s false. If the family is an authority, it no longer exerts influence through extended kinship. The power of a husband trumps the control of a father.
It will take more than the Friar’s Machiavellian scheming to fix the broken social hierarchy.
Experiments in Criticism 