An excellent exposition that clearly shows something unusual is up. Shakespeare often changed details from his sources and it always makes sense to ask why. In this case, I’m not sure I would call it satire or irony. It seems to me more a device to emphasize the tragedy caused by the foolishness of the adults. That the children were so young makes their deaths more tragic (and their rashness more believable). IMO.
Thanks for this, Carl! Something unusual is up - yes! I appreciate that. This is my favorite topic: seeing how Shakespeare departs from his source. Totally agree about the foolishness of the adults and how they’re ultimately responsible for the tragedy. I’ll be writing about that in a later post. Also agree RE their ages emphasizing both their rashness and the awfulness of their fate.
Let's say tenderloin, shall we? And note the difference between poets and philosophers, once more, including critics, demographers, sociologists. Damn these poets! Toss them out of the Republic now!
Understand this is in jest, but if anybody needs throwing out it's the critics. As best as I can tell, Shakespeare lowered her age to preclude her romanticization. But commentators went ahead and romanticized her anyway!
The first thing is that Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” is not an ad for following your heart into early-teen marriage. That’s the romantic interpretation which has been given far too much credit in the past 200 years. Shakespeare was not a romantic, and his play is more like a warning. One of the themes in the play is time, brought up time and again, and the young people are far too rushed in every sense. Remember that Romeo is head over heels in love with another girl on the very day when he meets Juliet, and the two eponymous characters spend, what? All in all twelve hours together, tops? The play has been labelled a tragedy, but in Shakespeare, tragedy and comedy go hand in hand, not just through an occasional comic-relief character, but running throughout every scene at times. I remember seeing Zeffirelli’s film when I was twelve, and I actually laughed at the ending. Shakespeare even lampoons this ending in the mechanics’ rendition of “Pyramus and Thisbe” in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”.
The other thing to consider is that Shakespeare loved to add local color to his plays, for fun. The Danish custom of heavy drinking is brought into “Hamlet”, trusting omens is brought into “Julius Caesar”, and so on. So if we are looking for teenage marriages in Shakespeare’s England, we’re barking up the wrong tree. We should be looking at Italy, and in the aristocracy where marriages were frequently arranged for political or financial reasons, and the wives were sometimes decades younger than their husbands. It is highly likely that Juliet's age is brought in for shock value and to poke fun at the Italian aristocracy.
Thanks, Lars! We see things alike! But as you may know, that makes us deeply at odds with the prevailing critical understanding of the play, where some at least read it in exactly this way - ie. an ad for young marriage. Very happy to have you as a reader, John
An excellent exposition that clearly shows something unusual is up. Shakespeare often changed details from his sources and it always makes sense to ask why. In this case, I’m not sure I would call it satire or irony. It seems to me more a device to emphasize the tragedy caused by the foolishness of the adults. That the children were so young makes their deaths more tragic (and their rashness more believable). IMO.
Thanks for this, Carl! Something unusual is up - yes! I appreciate that. This is my favorite topic: seeing how Shakespeare departs from his source. Totally agree about the foolishness of the adults and how they’re ultimately responsible for the tragedy. I’ll be writing about that in a later post. Also agree RE their ages emphasizing both their rashness and the awfulness of their fate.
Let's say tenderloin, shall we? And note the difference between poets and philosophers, once more, including critics, demographers, sociologists. Damn these poets! Toss them out of the Republic now!
Understand this is in jest, but if anybody needs throwing out it's the critics. As best as I can tell, Shakespeare lowered her age to preclude her romanticization. But commentators went ahead and romanticized her anyway!
Two things must be considered here.
The first thing is that Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” is not an ad for following your heart into early-teen marriage. That’s the romantic interpretation which has been given far too much credit in the past 200 years. Shakespeare was not a romantic, and his play is more like a warning. One of the themes in the play is time, brought up time and again, and the young people are far too rushed in every sense. Remember that Romeo is head over heels in love with another girl on the very day when he meets Juliet, and the two eponymous characters spend, what? All in all twelve hours together, tops? The play has been labelled a tragedy, but in Shakespeare, tragedy and comedy go hand in hand, not just through an occasional comic-relief character, but running throughout every scene at times. I remember seeing Zeffirelli’s film when I was twelve, and I actually laughed at the ending. Shakespeare even lampoons this ending in the mechanics’ rendition of “Pyramus and Thisbe” in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”.
The other thing to consider is that Shakespeare loved to add local color to his plays, for fun. The Danish custom of heavy drinking is brought into “Hamlet”, trusting omens is brought into “Julius Caesar”, and so on. So if we are looking for teenage marriages in Shakespeare’s England, we’re barking up the wrong tree. We should be looking at Italy, and in the aristocracy where marriages were frequently arranged for political or financial reasons, and the wives were sometimes decades younger than their husbands. It is highly likely that Juliet's age is brought in for shock value and to poke fun at the Italian aristocracy.
Thanks, Lars! We see things alike! But as you may know, that makes us deeply at odds with the prevailing critical understanding of the play, where some at least read it in exactly this way - ie. an ad for young marriage. Very happy to have you as a reader, John