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Comment by rcxdude | Hacker News Reader

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.

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>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.

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