A Case Against Natural Magic: Shakespeare’s Friar Laurence as Romeo and Juliet’s Near-Tragic Hero

In the Renaissance milieu of fervent Neoplatonsim, we are not surprised to find within its literature a focus on cosmology and the hierarchy of the universe as they are manifested in narratives of the period. Humankind’s relationship to the divine along with the responsibilities and freedoms to be found therein were questioned by humanists even while devotion to the Church strongly persisted. With this in mind, if, as Elizabeth Spiller maintains, “early modern imaginative literature and experimental science are inventions of a startling new attention to knowledge . . . [which] represents new ways of thinking, new understandings of how man could create knowledge, and new ways of writing that try to recreate those ideas,” the tensions inherent in the period are indeed noteworthy.¹ In a writer like William Shakespeare, they can perform on multiple levels with purposes at once seemingly latent, yet quietly revelatory. Upon a close reading of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, giving special attention to Friar Laurence, we will find, despite some of his missteps, a positive path toward ultimate salvation. Reflective of the time, Friar Laurence is, at the outset, an image of splintered piety, a man clearly called by God but also drawn by earthly passion and the charitable though destructive drive to manipulate nature in opposition to divine law. To examine this splintering—its evident oppositions, its unalterable ramifications, and its final, healing transformation—does not ignore the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet but highlights the undeniable importance of the Friar’s role and Shakespeare’s view of the dangers inherent in the self-deifying character of natural magic.

Within the works of William Shakespeare, I maintain, is a profound reverence for the God of Christianity, as he was prefigured by the ancients and as he had been portrayed since the earliest centuries after Christ’s birth and ministry. Revisiting Romeo and Juliet, then, with an eye on the philosophies surrounding Shakespeare will serve to elucidate my views of Friar Laurence. For example, in his dialogue on the hierarchy of the universe, the Timaeus, Plato asserts that for he who “has devoted himself to the love of learning and to true wisdom . . . there is absolutely no way that his thoughts can fail to be immortal and divine[:] . . . constantly caring for his divine part as he does, keeping well-ordered the guiding spirit that lives within him, he must indeed be supremely happy.”² Indeed, we discover a Friar Laurence not singularly happy with his decisions and actions until he at last submits to and enjoys the freedoms concomitant with divine wisdom. Before that time, he falls out of the “perfect order” of Plato’s illustration. Moreover, in keeping with the thoughts of Boethian philosophy, the Friar—to actualize his priestly role—must recognize the opposing forces within his own soul and know that if he “turn[s] [his] eyes away from the light of truth above to things on a lower and dimmer level, they are soon darkened by the mists of ignorance.”³ Such sound philosophical precedent resonates throughout the play as the Friar speaks words of wisdom yet acts in contradiction.

While contrariety is to be noted among many of the play’s characters, it is in Friar Laurence most problematic, for he stands in persona Christi and is thus trusted and respected by those who most need his wisdom. Critic Lucy Beckett explains, “Shakespeare explored the dilemmas of kingship, or any exercise of great power, and of the mismatch between men and the roles they must play, the healing qualities of human simplicity, the responsibility of the soul before God.”⁴ Friar Laurence is a supreme example of just such a claim. Beckett does not consider Romeo and Juliet to be tragic characters, for they, “however poignant their love and their deaths, are no more than adolescent victims of . . . [an] Italian city feud.”⁵ If Romeo and Juliet are not to blame for their missteps, in whom then, lies the flaw? It is, I propose, the supposedly more mature, more reverent and rational Friar...