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Soliloquy
Explanation and Analysis—Friar Laurence's Entrance:
Friar Laurence—a friendly friar who is close to Romeo and ends up marrying him to Juliet—first appears in Act 2, Scene 3. As he walks onto the stage, carrying the weeds and flowers he uses to make potions, he muses on the subject of nature in a soliloquy that features a paradox:
I must upfill this osier cage of ours
With baleful weeds and precious-juicèd flowers.
The Earth that’s nature’s mother is her tomb;
What is her burying grave, that is her womb;
Friar Laurence describes the Earth as both nature's "mother" or "womb," and her "tomb" or "burying grave," underscoring the proximity of life to death. Land serves as a terrain in which to grow crops and plants (such as those he uses for his own potion-making), but it is also where bodies are buried, and where those crops and plants will eventually die and decompose.
This paradox is a commentary on both the inevitability of death—which is present in the land all around us—and its inextricability from life. As a healer and potion-maker, Friar Laurence is intimately familiar with nature and connected to the life-and-death cycle in a profound way. In contrast to the violent, tempestuous Montagues and Capulets, who treat life and death casually (at least until one of their own is killed), Friar Laurence is a pacifist. He understands that death is a natural part of life, something that cannot be avoided; yet he also relishes life, and believes in its preservation. This pacifism will lead him to help Romeo and Juliet marry in secret, since he believes that their union will restore peace to Verona.
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