Good question - and quite a difficult one to answer. Friar Laurence is a monk, with whom Romeo has struck up a very close friendship. He has odd beliefs (certainly unusual for a Christian friar!) and an unusual faith in nature and natural medicine:
O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies
In plants, herbs, stones, and their true qualities;
For naught so vile that on the earth doth live
But to the earth some special good doth give...
He agrees on the spot to marry Romeo and Juliet, in the hope that he can heal the alliance between their households:
For this alliance may so happy prove
To turn your households’ rancour to pure love.
He also provides sage counsel to Romeo about taking things slowly:
Wisely and slow, they stumble that run fast.
He alone among the adults in Verona seems to have the trust of both Romeo (who comes to him immediately after killing Tybalt, rather than return to the Montague house) and Juliet (who comes to him when she hears she has to marry Paris).
Yet Shakespeare provides a strange, discordant ending to his story. Though he's helped the lovers all the way through, he deserts Juliet at the last minute, in pure cowardice:
Stay not to question, for the watch is coming.
Come, go, good Juliet. I dare no longer stay.
The prince leaves it open at the end of the play as to whether the friar will be punished or absolved, commenting only that they had thought him "a holy man". However - in Shakespeare's source, the friar was hanged.
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