Juliet can think of no alternative but to fly to Friar Laurence.

At this point the friar might have shown courage. He might have gone to the Capulets with the truth and endeavored to protect himself and Juliet with his priestly robes. Under the circumstances, there would have been great risk, but there were no reasonable alternatives.

Friar Laurence turns to an unreasonable one. As romantic as Juliet, he tries a complicated plan of indirection. He gives Juliet a mysterious drug he has prepared himself. He tells her to take it the night of the next day (Wednesday) and it will put her into a cataleptic trance. He says:

—Act IV, scene i, lines 96-98

This trance will last forty-two hours, that is, through Thursday and Friday. The Capulets, thinking she is dead, will place her in the family tomb. Romeo will be there by Friday night, and when she wakes he will carry her off to Mantua.

This drug is, of course, an element of fantasy, for no drug is known (even today) that can safely counterfeit death so accurately over so long a time.

For the first time in the play, there is a sizable gap in time. Some thirty-six hours are skipped over and it is Wednesday night. Juliet suddenly submits to her father's plans (to his relief and pleasure) and has now prepared herself, supposedly, for a wedding the next morning. She sends out the Nurse so that she may sleep alone, and as she prepares to take the friar's drug, she is beset with quite understandable fears.

What if it kills her? Or, worse still, what if it wears off too soon and she comes to in the tomb before Romeo is there to claim her? What if she is surrounded by the effluvium of death, the gibbering of ghosts, and, in general, by

—Act IV, scene iii, lines 46-48

The mandrake is a herb with a large, fleshy root that is usually forked in such proportions as to give it a resemblance to a partly formed man. About this fancied resemblance a number of superstitions arose.

Since the root looked like a man it would, supposedly, help in the formation of one, and mandrakes were therefore thought to have the ability to make women fecund. This superstition (a worthless one, of course) is sanctioned by the Bible, where Jacob's second wife, Rachel, who is barren, begs for the mandrakes gathered by the son of his first wife, her sister Leah (Genesis 30:14).

It was also thought that because mandrakes looked like little men they ought to share some of the qualities of men-feel pain, for instance, and cry out if wounded. From this arose the tale that if a mandrake were uprooted, it would emit a bloodcurdling shriek-so horrible a shriek as to madden or even kill those who heard it.

Since mandrakes were desired for the ability to increase fecundity, and for other valuable properties assigned to them, it was necessary to pull them up anyway. What was sometimes done was to tie the top of the herb to a dog. From a distance, stones could be thrown at the dog, and in running away, he would pull out the mandrake, which could then be reclaimed.

The first part of Friar Laurence's plan works well. Juliet does take the potion and falls into a cataleptic trance. In the midst of the preparations for the wedding on Thursday morning, the Nurse finds her apparently dead. Juliet is carried to the tomb with heartbreaking lamentation.

But there is another part of the plan. Romeo must be informed of all this and be ready to return to carry off Juliet on Friday. To carry this message to Romeo, Friar Laurence has sent off a friend, Friar John.

Romeo gets a message indeed, but it is from a servant of his who comes spurring hard from Verona with the tale that Juliet is dead and entombed. Romeo, stricken, has no thought but to reach Juliet's corpse and kill himself there. For the purpose he buys poison.

As for Friar John, however, he fails to reach Romeo. Before leaving he had sought the company of another friar, who had been visiting the sick, and both fell in with "searchers," that is, health officers, seeking to prevent spread of infection.

Friar John tells Friar Laurence that:

—Act V, scene ii, lines 8-11

He could neither leave town nor send the message. Friar Laurence, thunderstruck, now realizes he must hasten to the tomb so that Juliet will not waken alone and so that he can explain matters. Meanwhile, he sends another message.

The care of the "searchers" and their assiduity in applying quarantine is easily understood. In 1347 an "infectious pestilence" reached Europe. This was the infamous Black Death, the most frightening epidemic in world history. It is supposed to have killed some twenty-five million people in Europe in the space of three years, and quarantine was the only counter-measure the frightened continent knew.

On Friday all converge on the tomb. Paris arrives first to grieve over his lost bride. Then comes Romeo, intent on suicide. They fight and Paris is killed. Romeo then lays himself down next to Juliet, takes the poison, and dies. It is less than five days since he first laid eyes on his tragic love.

Only then does Friar Laurence finally come-a few minutes too late to prevent this further development of the catastrophe. He comes in muttering:

—Act V, scene iii, line 121

St. Francis (Giovanni Francesco Bernardone) was born in Assisi in 1182, and after the usual life of a gay, but not particularly immoral, young man of the upper classes, he experienced a conversion to a saintly life. About 1202 he began to embrace a life of poverty and gathered disciples about him who were dedicated to preaching humbly and making their way through life by reliance on free-will offerings of the pious. This was the beginning of the Franciscan order. Presumably Friar Laurence belonged to it.

Friar Laurence finds Paris and Romeo both dead, and even as he tries to absorb this, Juliet wakes. The friar tries to persuade her to come with him so that he might bestow her in a nunnery, but with Romeo dead, she does not want to live and will not budge. The friar thinks he hears a noise and has one last chance at a boldness that might save the last pitiful remnant-Juliet's life. He misses that, too, and flees in fear of being discovered.