Three Questions Inspired by PBS Romeo & Juliet

In a recent National Theater/PBS production of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, some of the most demanding, harsh lines scripted for Juliet's father, addressing Tybalt (1.5) and Juliet (3.5), were reassigned to her mother.

[Screenshot from "The Making of Romeo and Juliet via PBS. Fair use.]

- In 1.5, when Tybalt at the Capulet masque sees/hears Romeo, Tybalt says he wants to kill him on the spot. Instead of Juliet's father confronting him, her mother does, demanding Tybalt show better civility on this occasion, in her house.
- In 3.5: Instead of Juliet's father demanding that Juliet (who has secretly married Romeo) must marry Paris or be disowned, again, Juliet's mother gets these lines; in the original text, Lady Capulet was merely given the chance to briefly assent to her husband's harsh castigation of the daughter.

[Photo by Rob Youngson via PBS.]

- The scenes were played convincingly, I thought.
- On the one hand, Shakespeare would later have Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing ask Benedick to kill his friend Claudio; later still, he would create the characters of Lady Macbeth and Lear's cruel daughters.
- On the other hand, those are other, later plays; they are not Romeo and Juliet.

QUESTION:
How might the reassignments resonate with meaning in our times, given that the play is already highly critical of toxic masculinity?

The reassignments are far less destructive than some in previous ages (when, for example, the play was sometimes given a happy ending, supposedly due to popular demand).
Might Shakespeare approve of reassigning the lines from Capulet to Lady Capulet?
Do you?

A SECOND QUESTION:
When Romeo tells Friar Laurence in 2.3 that he loves his enemy (Juliet) and not Rosalind, Lawrence replies, “Holy Saint Francis, what a change is here!”
- How might the name “Francis” appear in this play, and in Hamlet, and in Much Ado, for similar reasons relating to a general context of revenge and enemies? Might this have to do with Francis having met with the Sultan of Egypt during a crusade?

A THIRD QUESTION:
In 2.3, Friar Laurence says,
“Virtue itself turns vice being misapplied,
And vice sometime by action dignified.”
In the context of the play and its two feuding families:
- What virtues in the play turn to vices, “being misapplied”? How?
- What vices in the play, in an individual context, might become dignified in a larger context? How?

For those who have not yet seen this National Theater production at PBS/Great Performances, try this link
or copy and paste the following URL:
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/romeo-juliet-about/12239/
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Disclaimer: If and when I quote or paraphrase bible passages in many of my blog posts, I do not intend to promote any religion over another, nor am I attempting to promote religious belief in general; only to point out how the Bible may have influenced Shakespeare, his plays, and his age.
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https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/12/top-20-hamlet-bible-posts.html

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