William Shakespeare’s classic play Romeo and Juliet is, on the surface, an age old story about two young lovers who experience forbidden love. Fourteen year old Romeo is seemingly head over heels in love with thirteen year old Juliet, but their relationship is doomed because of familial circumstances. Although it sounds like a sweet love story between two star crossed lovers, their relationship merits further examination because all may not be as it seems.
How young is too young to fall in love? When one looks at Romeo and Juliet one finds very little evidence of true love. For example, Romeo is a typical fourteen year old man subject to the whims that earmark his age. At the beginning of the play he is in love with Rosaline who, by the way, remains unseen and unheard throughout the play, so we never do get to hear her side of their supposed love story. Their love seems to be the immature kind that we would term “puppy love” today. No one, including Friar Laurence, believes that Romeo and Rosaline will last. In fact, Romeo makes a comment to Friar Laurence about how he “chides” Romeo for loving Rosaline. Friar Laurence is quick to point out that he does not “chide” Romeo for loving Rosaline, but rather for doting after her like a lovesick puppy. In fact, Romeo is heartbroken over being rejected by Rosaline, and that is when he first sees Juliet. Furthermore, once he sets eyes on Juliet at her family estate during a party, the reader never hears anything else said about Rosaline. This infatuation with the opposite sex is quite normal during the teenage years when hormones are raging out of control, and it does not necessarily equate to being in love.
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The reader is aware that Romeo is not actually in love with Juliet because of how quickly it occurred after his rejection by Rosaline and by how this supposed love seemed to burn so brightly. The language he used when talking about his feelings for Juliet were overly exuberant and seemed wildly out of control. In today’s world, if two people, teenagers no less, were to start talking marriage after only knowing each other for mere minutes, the world would think they had gone mad. The case is no different with Romeo and Juliet. They are only concerned with their lustful appetites. Had they actually been able to pull off this marriage, it would have, in all likelihood, only lasted weeks, if not days.
Romeo is the typical teenage boy protagonist. He is prisoner to his lustful appetites and flits from one pretty girl to another without any thought other than falling in what he terms love. What he presumes to be real love is actually merely lust or longing for a physical release. When his love is requited by Juliet he mistakenly thinks that she is the one for his marriage bed even though they are both inexperienced and barely into their teens. He cannot love Juliet because he does not have enough life experiences to be able to even ascertain what true love is. What he feels is a need for this psychosomatic feeling that makes him almost manic.
The ease with which he transfers his affections from one girl to another should be a large warning flag to all readers that this is a mere boy who is not in love, but is, rather, in love with being in love. Rather than looking at this story as a love story, it should be viewed as more of a cautionary tale. For girls, this means being wary of a boy who tells you he loves you and wants to marry you ten minutes after meeting you. For boys, this means understanding that love and lust are not the same thing. This story would have been almost laughable, a comedy perhaps, if it were not for the tragic death of the two young teenagers.
