'Romeo and Juliet' is not at all what you think

Almost all modern productions of the play, and all recent film productions, ignore the fact that Juliet is a mere child, a fact that Shakespeare accentuates by making her three years younger than she is in the source that inspired him. Shakespeare’s own daughter, Susanna, was about Juliet’s age when he wrote the play. The play’s tragic dimension springs from the failure of the adults to protect the child from the erotically-charged Romeo, who is at least five years Juliet’s senior and is, therefore, a sexual predator, to put the matter bluntly. This cautionary dynamic, which is clearly what Shakespeare intended and what his contemporaries would have understood was his intention, is ignored by modern romantically salacious productions. …

We need to understand what is love before we can judge whether Romeo truly loved Juliet. In Christian terms, the act of love is laying down our lives for the good of the other; in classical philosophical terms, love is wiling the good of the other. Where do we see any evidence of Romeo loving in this way? On the contrary, we see from the play’s outset that he is obsessed with an erotically-charged and ultimately self-gratifying understanding of love, which he himself calls “madness.”

[This is an indictment of the Romantic era, which fundamentally shifted the understanding of the play, as well as an indictment of some modern stagings of the play — perhaps most notably the 1968 film version with a 15-year-old Olivia Hussey in the role of Juliet. I’ll be discussing this with Joseph while guest hosting on Relevant Radio next week. — Ed]