Lord Capulet

Lord Capulet, in William Shakespeare’s "Romeo and Juliet", is a loving, but controlling father. Lord Capulet is the head of his family and father to Juliet Capulet. He is sometimes interfering, commanding, and controlling, but at the same time he can be courteous and generous, as he appears at his party. He sometimes let jealousy get in the way. When Tybalt tries to incite a duel with Romeo, while at the party, Capulet tries to calm him and then threatens to disinherit him if he does not control his temper.

Capulet dearly loves his daughter, Juliet, but believes he knows what is best for her. 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 Tybalt's death, he entirely forgets about her feelings and tries to force her to be married to Count Paris in a misguided attempt to cheer her up (as stated by his wife). When she refuses to become Paris's "joyful bride", he becomes furious, threatening to turn her out on the streets, calling her "unworthy", "young baggage" and "disobedient wretch" and for her to be dead (in "The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet", he not only threatens to turn her out but to lock her in jail if she doesn't obey her parents' orders). He fixes the day of the marriage for Thursday and suddenly advances it to Wednesday out of anger and impulse. He is highly insensitive to the feelings of his daughter up to this point. All this changes, however, when he sees her unconscious on her bed, presumed to be dead, and later when she is really dead during the play's final scene.

In the 1996 film, he is played by Paul Sorvino and is given the first name "Fulgencio". His foul temper is expanded on to the point of screaming at the top of his voice, and in the scene where he yells at Juliet he can be seen manhandling her (and he is even slapped in the face by his own wife).