Question 3

Why can it be argued that the County Paris is the most tragic of all characters in this play?

3. County Paris, the unfortunate, is by far the most tragic of all characters. Shakespeare may have been pushing the idea of what is now Calvinistic predestination in this character. Paris does not do anything wrong in to get in his position of receiving a wife who is already married. He indeed has a terrible fate due to other people.

Just as do Romeo and Juliet, Paris does end up killing himself. In reality he had no reasons to why he should have been killed off in the play. He did what he was supposed to. There was nothing mentioning any reason as to why he should have died. Paris did nothing wrong because he was supposed to be the husband of Juliet in the first place.

In the story County Paris does react somewhat similar to the way Romeo reacts at the end of the play. The strange thing about this similarity is that Romeo acts as if nothing was his fault at ends up dead out of selfishness and not because he has in a way killed Juliet. Similarly, Paris does also is dead, but really can not blame himself for what he has done because he has not done anything wrong. Paris was not really one of the characters who absolutely needed to be there in order for the play to make sense. Pairs had nothing to due with the evil acts of Friar Laurence, the Nurse, or any of the selfishness of Romeo and Juliet. In a way, Paris was taken advantage of. Juliet knew that she was supposed to marry Paris early enough to ‘undo’ her marriage to Romeo; yet she still continued on attempting and succeeding to finalize the marriage. At any point Juliet could have stopped things and set them straight. Instead she knew that Paris had no knowledge whatsoever as far as Juliet’s first marriage so she decided to take advantage of his lack of information.

The idea that is being played with here is whether there really are people who are predestined to evil and misfortune. The reason being is that Shakespeare really has put County Paris in the position where there is nothing he can do to make things better, and where he feels like he has promoted the misfortune. This is also seen shown in the way that Paris does not know what to do when he first finds out what is happening.