The Prince rules Verona and speaks for the law. He enters three times, each time after blood (Act 1, Scene 1; Act 3, Scene 1; Act 5, Scene 3).

"Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace" (Act 1, Scene 1). A "forfeit" is a penalty for breaking a bond: the law prices the next brawl at a life. AQA printed this speech in November 2020. Yet the sentence falls on the fathers, and the next brawl is fought by the young.
"And I, for winking at your discords too, / Have lost a brace of kinsmen. All are punished." (Act 5, Scene 3). "Winking at" means turning a blind eye. Having lost Mercutio and Paris, he counts himself among the guilty, and three words pass sentence on everyone. Yet two lines earlier the deaths are heaven's "scourge": providence working through human guilt, not the stars alone.

In between, he softens death to exile but goes no further: "Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill" (Act 3, Scene 1). On its face the scene's closing couplet justifies severity; yet he has just shown mercy, so it may also be a ruler doubting his own judgement. The irony is the play's: exile sets the Friar's Mantua plan going (Act 3, Scene 3), so even this mercy kills. For conflict and fate answers, weigh Barry Adams's Prince, "a model of prudence" whose "knowledge of events is incomplete", against Naomi Conn Liebler's Verona, which "commits suicide".

The Prince rules Verona and speaks for the law. He enters three times, each time after blood (Act 1, Scene 1; Act 3, Scene 1; Act 5, Scene 3).

"Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace" (Act 1, Scene 1). A "forfeit" is a penalty for breaking a bond: the law prices the next brawl at a life. AQA printed this speech in November 2020. Yet the sentence falls on the fathers, and the next brawl is fought by the young.
"And I, for winking at your discords too, / Have lost a brace of kinsmen. All are punished." (Act 5, Scene 3). "Winking at" means turning a blind eye. Having lost Mercutio and Paris, he counts himself among the guilty, and three words pass sentence on everyone. Yet two lines earlier the deaths are heaven's "scourge": providence working through human guilt, not the stars alone.