Who He Is
Paris is the count who asks for the hand of Juliet, a kinsman of Mercutio and of Prince Escalus, whom the Prince counts at the end among the kinsmen he has lost. He arrives with the approval of Capulet and with his haste, and behaves as the suitor the rules require: respectful, not forcing conversation with the mourning bride, attentive to the friar. The play does not make him a villain: it only places him on the path of a marriage that has already happened.
Trajectory
In Scene 2 of Act I, he asks Capulet for Juliet's hand, and Capulet says she is still young. Paris answers that younger women than she are happy mothers. He receives the invitation to the ball that night. In Scene 3 of Act I, Juliet's mother introduces him as the suitor.
In Scene 4 of Act III, in Capulet's house, he says that times of mourning do not suit courtship and that he wishes the Thursday already set for the wedding were the next day.
In Scene 1 of Act IV, he tells the friar that he has spoken little of love with Juliet, because she weeps for her cousin without measure, and that Capulet hastens the wedding to dry these tears. When Juliet arrives, he calls her his lady and his wife, and she answers with phrases of double meaning. In Scene 5 of Act IV, he goes with musicians to fetch the bride and finds her dead: he laments in a run of words, deceived, divorced, outraged.
In Scene 3 of Act V, he goes at night to Juliet's tomb, orders his page to keep watch and scatters flowers. He sees Romeo break into the tomb, supposes that he comes to desecrate the bodies out of revenge, and confronts him. Romeo asks him to flee, the fight happens anyway, and Paris falls asking to be laid beside Juliet. Romeo recognizes him, calls him Mercutio's kinsman and grants the request.
Themes Embodied
Paris never comes to know what the audience knows: he reads Juliet's tears as mourning for her cousin, thinks the wedding will console her and, in the tomb, supposes that a Montague has come to desecrate the dead girl.
It is one of the most undeserved deaths in the play: Paris does nothing against the lovers except want to marry her, and he is killed by the one who, before killing him, asks him to flee. Romeo calls him, as he lays him in the tomb, a companion in the book of woes, with a compassion that comes too late.
Relationships
- Juliet: the bride he courts without knowing her and whom he mourns dead without knowing she lives.
- Capulet: the future father-in-law, who hastens the wedding and calls him son on the day of mourning.
- Friar Laurence: Juliet's confessor, whom he leaves alone with her in the cell, out of respect for her devotion.
- Romeo: the rival he does not know is a rival, and who kills him in the tomb.
- Mercutio: the kinsman whose connection to him Romeo recalls on recognizing him.