Juliet
Who is Juliet?
Juliet appears only briefly, first as a silent figure led offstage alongside Claudio at his arrest, and then in a single scene where the disguised Duke visits her in prison to hear her confession. She takes full responsibility for her pregnancy, describing her sin as mutually committed with Claudio and of heavier kind than his, a self-assessment the Duke gently corrects before offering her spiritual counsel.
Claudio's betrothed, imprisoned for the same offense that condemns him, whose brief prison confession is one of the play's few glimpses of genuine remorse.
Appears In
Biography
Her circumstances mirror Claudio's exactly - both are imprisoned for the same act, both await a fate decided by Angelo - but the play gives her almost none of the extended pleading or philosophical reflection it grants Claudio, keeping her at the margins of a plot that is, in practice, about her as much as about him.
Juliet's reappearance in Act V, alongside the revealed and pardoned Claudio, completes her arc without further comment from her; the reunion of the couple is folded into the play's general resolution rather than dramatized as its own scene, a quieter ending than the public reckonings given to Isabella, Mariana, and Angelo.
Motivation
Juliet is motivated by love for Claudio and a genuine remorse for their shared offense, which she insists on describing as more her responsibility than his.
Personality
Juliet is given little stage time relative to her importance to the plot, but what she does say shows a directness about her own culpability that contrasts with the legal and rhetorical maneuvering surrounding her case elsewhere in the play.