Friar Laurence

Friar Laurence was a character in William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet.

At some point before the beginning of Act V, Juliet Capulet had the Friar send a letter to Mantua before she took her sleeping draught. Intended for her husband Romeo Montague, it would have told him she was not really dead, but Romeo never received this correspondence and he returned to Verona once news reached him of Juliet's sudden passing. Later, in Act V Scene III, after Romeo and Juliet had both committed suicide in the Capulet tomb upon discovering the lifeless body of the other, Friar Laurence was caught in possession of a mattock and a spade by members of the watch as he was coming across the churchyard. One watchman escorted him into the tomb and presented him to his superior as "a friar that trembles, sighs and weeps" before explaining how he was taken prisoner. The Chief Watchman proclaimed the Friar was "a great suspicion" and ordered his subordinate to keep him close by. After Romeo and Juliet's fathers, Capulet and Montague respectively, had witnessed the scene of death and quickly healed the rift between their feuding families, the Friar was brought forward on the Chief's orders, who demanded that he explain his role in the affair. Laurence complied, disclosing that Romeo and Juliet had been secretly married.

In an alternative version of the play conceived to "make dark tragedie light", Romeo and Juliet had not killed themselves and were hiding out of sight in the tomb, being replaced on the altar by a Sontaran clone and a Teselecta so that their parents would still resolve to end their conflict. The Friar was as shocked as everybody when the Doctor revealed this and the real Romeo and Juliet emerged from the TARDIS. Admist the ensuing celebration, Laurence declared his "secret love" for Juliet's nurse. She told him she "did not have suspicion of [his] lust" but that she reciprocated his feelings and they resultantly joined hands. (PROSE: The True and Most Excellent Comedie of Romeo and Juliet)