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Comment by bazoom42 | Hacker News Reader

They are in love. This is what makes it such a tragedy.

Romeo and Juliet are not idiots, they are clearly the most sensible persons in the play. And it is anachronisic to call them teenagers, since the idea of “teenage” as a stage between childhood and adulthood is a 20th century innovation. In the universe of the play, they are adults and of marrying age.

Apparently some teachers try to teach the play as a warning against young love - probably because they are afraid of students emulating the sex and suicide. But if you actually read the play, it is entirely on the side of the young lovers and condemns the parents and society. Radical, even today!

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it can be both: clearly the feud is idiotic, but also the framing does go a little out of its way to show how their love is largely young infatuation. it's tragic through the interaction of multiple reasonable and unreasonable elements in all the characters.

>but also the framing does go a little out of its way to show how their love is largely young infatuation.

I'm not sure that Shakespeare really had a concept of beyond young infatuation like we have today, probably the best examples (where the couple still feels like they have anything to do with each other more intimate than running a household) would be Claudius and Gertrude and Macbeth and his wife, neither of which couple had so much to recommend them over Romeo and Juliet.

I'm not sure that Shakespeare really had a concept of beyond young infatuation like we have today

I'm not sure what you mean, but if you mean that he mostly thought of love as childish infatuation, you can see him exploring quite a variety of other types of love in the sonnets.

The love of Romeo and Juliet is certainly more mature than say Othello and Desdemona, or Hamlet and Ophelia, or Antony and Cleopatra. So I think “childish” is coming from prejudice, not from the play itself.

Btw the age of Romeo is never stated. Juliet is very young, but her parents are consistently depicted as much more childish and immature.

Nah - I think they're daft kids and Shakespeare is showing us that. The play begins with Romeo utterly in love with Rosaline - what's that for if not to show us not to take his feelings for Juliet too seriously

And Juliet's 13 - which was very young for marriage even at that time. Certainly not what would have been considered 'adult' then

> The play begins with Romeo utterly in love with Rosaline - what's that for if not to show us not to take his feelings for Juliet too seriously

Rosaline is a nun and therefore pure and unattainable. Shakespeare is lampooning the genre of “courtly love” where the poet is longing but the love never consummated. Romeos “heavy lightness”-poem is a satire of this genre.

This is contrasted with the love for Juliet which is real and physical. Notice how Romeos poetry becomes a lot better when he meets Juliet.

The complaints that Romeo and Juliets love is “not real” (because of physical desire and sex) is really an echo of the ideals of courtly love, which Shakespeare ridicules.

> And Juliet's 13 - which was very young for marriage even at that time. Certainly not what would have been considered 'adult' then

This is specifically adressed in the play. Juliet is consideret of appropriate age for marriage, and is already being set up with Paris before she meets Romeo.

Of course she is just a child by modern standards, but that is irrelevant for understanding a 400-year old play.

> they are clearly the most sensible persons in the play

Their committing suicide would beg to differ. And whether or not they were considered adults, they were surely in the throes of biological puberty.

I don't think the play has a side. It is a story that contains multitudes.

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