Why does Prince Escalus gets the last words in romeo and Juliet.?
The Prince of “Scales” as in the scales of justice is the final arbiter of who gets punished. You will notice this idea of meting out punishment is very important to Shakespeare (or perhaps to the Tudor audience). In most modern day tragedies other than police procedurals, it isn’t always obvious that people receive punishment. Of course, the twist in the play is that although the Prince of Scales does say “Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished” he doesn’t tell you who. In the source story for the play, the Nurse and the Apothecary are punished and the friar and the nobles are pardoned. Many people in the audience would already know the story, and be expecting this end. However, since Shakespeare has recast the Nurse from an evil character to a comic one, and the apothecary to a mere instrument of the plot, it wouldn’t be very satisfying to punish them and let the other ones go. Shakespeare leaves it vague because he wants to the listeners of his play to think that all of society i
