When Friar Laurence asks for Romeo's response to the letter he sent containing their devious plans to forge Juliet's death, Friar John then tells him that he was stay'd and could not travel to Mantua, where Romeo was in hiding.
John was unaware of the importance of the letter and in failing to deliver it, he contributed to the untimely fate of Romeo and Juliet. That little miscommunication, has a ripple effect that caused Romeo to buy poison, Juliet to wake up and watch her lover die, and finally her own suicide with Romeo's dagger.
If Shakespeare had not written this, the tragedy in its entirety would be changed to a love story that ends well, a dark comedy even. But being that the story starts off with the deliberate intent to inform the reader that this is no happy tail, that the two star-crossed lovers are indeed doomed to die, this miscommunication was necessary. Shakespeare's flawless capability to write tragedy is astounding in the sense that everything that he wrote four hundred years ago is cleverly applicable to today.
Because of miscommunication during the Civil War, the North and South forces fought even after the war was over, resulting in needless deaths. Often a simple lack of relay between two opposing forces can result in devastating circumstances.
Because of this, I find Friar John and Friar Laurence's misinterpreted calculations on the importance of the letter to be crucial to the story.
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