Lord Capulet
By Amelia Staats
In the play “Romeo and Juliet” by William Shakespeare, Lord Capulet is a character that has a truly inexplicable mind. In one of the first scenes of the play he is telling his daughter’s suitor Paris, that Juliet is too young to marry him. He is insisting to Paris, that he wants his only daughter to marry for love and that she should not be forced to. In one of the last scenes he seems determined for her to be married to him, unaware she is already married to Romeo. He was going to force her to marry against her will at the end. This act of injustice unintentionally caused her pain, and possibly his determination partially caused her fate.
In the beginning of the play, Lord Capulet was portrayed as a concerned father the deeply cared about his daughter’s happiness. First, he told Paris he wanted his daughter to marry for love even though he knew she would be taken care of. Then he hosted a party so that Juliet could get to know Paris and have the chance of falling in love with him. He so quickly changes his mind when he wants to force Juliet to marry Paris, and is then exposed as a monster. Juliet is then so upset that she agrees to the friar’s plan which begins the tragic ending for the young man and women.
I believe that even in the end Lord Capulet’s actions were all out of love for his daughter. Certainly in the beginning he was only thinking about her happiness, and in the end it seemed like he just wanted Juliet to marry someone that would take care of her. He thought Paris, being a respected member of the community and wealthy was best for her. Unfortunately, he wasn’t taking her age into account or the fact that he truly didn’t know a lot about her life. If he knew about her love for Romeo he might have accepted it. There was also the extremely likely possibility that he would have discouraged it because Romeo was a Montague. Lord Capulet’s mind changed very quickly and might have resulted in the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet.