I was talking to my ex-boyfriend's little brother one weekend, and he told me he had to finish reading Romeo and Juliet for school so he could write his paper. He was in 9th grade, and his paper topic was to answer the question: whose fault is the ending of Romeo and Juliet? He asked me how I would respond, which led to my thinking, for a long time, about this question. Immediately, I jokingly replied that the ending is Shakespeare's fault, for his words created the young lovers' deaths. Baxter, however, needed better guidance for his attempt to form a thesis. Yes, some could say Capulet and Montague are to blame for their futile, disastrous hatred, and others might argue that Friar Lawrence should never have created the potion for Juliet. Baxter even suggested that Romeo and Juliet should never have given into such blind love.

     So I thought about on whom Shakespeare might have placed the blame for such a tragic ending to the story. Perhaps Capulet for trying to force Juliet to marry Paris; perhaps Tybalt for murdering Mercutio. Finally, I decided that the point of Romeo and Juliet has little to do with placing blame. True, the tragedy, in real life, would no doubt lead to devastated mothers accusing their husbands of indirectly murdering their children. But Romeo and Juliet is little more than a fantastical representation of an exaggerated version of a soap opera. In fact, I would equate its realism to that of the "reality" TV shows of today. In other words, the reader must not try to imagine how this ending would play out in real life, or on whom to place any blame, because no such events would ever realistically take place. Even in Shakespeare's time. So Shakespeare probably didnt' intend for the reader to point fingers, but he wanted us to absorb the lyrical poetry and the idealistic youth in order to appreciate the story at its basic level: a love story gone terribly wrong. Despite the ending, Romeo and Juliet die together as a married couple, which they most of all desired. Romeo even tells Friar Lawrence that "come what sorrow can, it cannot counterveil the exchange of joy that one short minute gives me in her sight" (2.6.3-5). This, a clear foreshadowing of the future, is Shakespeare's blatant answer that these two are happier to have loved, married, and died than to have never loved at all. So, no one is really to "blame" because they got their wishes and shared more passion in five days than many people dream of experiencing in fifty years.