Romeo and Juliet Introduction (Book)

Lord Capulet

House of Capulet

Age: Middle-aged

Main Characteristics: Spciable, Generous, Dictatorial, Prone to fits of rage

Associates: Lady Capulet, Paris, Members of the Capulet family

Description: Lord Capulet is the patriarch of the Capulet family, the father of Juliet, and uncle of Tybalt. He is very wealthy, but he is not an aristocrat; that is, it would be incorrect to refer to him as "Lord Capulet". He is sometimes commanding but also convivial, as at the ball. When Tybalt tries to incite a duel with Romeo, while at the party, Capulet tries to calm him and then threatens to throw him out of the family if he does not control his temper; he does the same to his daughter later in the play.

Capulet believes he knows what is best for Juliet. He says that his consent to the marriage depends upon what she wants and tells Paris that if he wants to marry her he should wait a while then ask her. Later however, when Juliet is grieving over Romeo being sent away, Capulet thinks her sorrow is due to Tybalt's death and in a misguided attempt to cheer her up, he wants to surprise her by arranging a marriage between her and Count Paris – the catch is that she has to be "ruled" by her father and to accept the proposal. When she refuses to become Paris's "joyful bride", saying that she can "never be proud of what she hates", he becomes furious, threatening to make her a street urchin, calling her "hilding" (meaning "slut" or "whore"), "unworthy", "young baggage" and "disobedient wretch" (along with "green-sickness carrion" and "tallow-face"), as well as saying that God giving Juliet to them was a "curse" and that he now realizes that he and his wife had one child too many when Juliet was born (in The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, he not only threatens to turn her out but to sentence her to rotting away in prison if she does not obey her parents' orders). He then storms away, with his wife rejecting Juliet before following suit. He fixes the day of the marriage for Thursday and suddenly advances it to Wednesday out of anger and impulse. His actions indicate that his daughter's wants were irrelevant all the way up to the point when he sees her unconscious on her bed (presumably dead) and later when she is truly dead during the play's final scene.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characters_in_Romeo_and_Juliet#Capulet