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• The stories on which William Shakespeare based several of his plays including Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo and Juliet, Cymbeline and 12th Night were supplied by the Italian writer Matteo Bandello who died two years before Shakespeare was born
• Matteo Bandello's collection of 214 novels made him the most popular short story writer of his day in his lifetime
• In Bandelo's lifetime, Italian vendettas or family blood feuds were a long-standing tradition
• The honor of a family required that the adequate vengeance be sought for the injury or death of a family member
• Innocent bystanders could often be killed or injured and many laws were enacted in an attempt to reduce the violence of vendettas
• Shakespeare used two feuding families in Verona, the Montechi and the Capello families, as the models for the Montague and Capulet families of his tragic play
• William Shakespeare came from a town called Stratford-upon-Avon and is believed never to have traveled outside of England
• Some believe Shakespeare could have got all of his knowledge about Italy and France from foreigners living in London and from reading books
• In 16th century England, there was a strong expectation upon women to marry and have children
• Husbands would often punish their wives, and women belonged to their fathers or to their brothers if their father had died, and then to their husbands, and were not allowed to own property of their own
• The only exceptions were widows, as they would be in charge of their own life and property, but if they married again they would effectively become property once again
• It is thought that Queen Elizabeth never married because she did not want to give up her power to a man
• Courtly love was a highly conventionalized medieval tradition of love between a knight and a married noble woman, first developed by the troubadours of southern France in the 12th century and extensively employed in the European literature during the 13th to 15th centuries
• Medieval literature has many examples of knights setting out on adventures and performing various deeds or services for ladies because of their courtly love
• Boys do not love until they arrive at the age of maturity, which is why Romeo's lack of maturity is his tragic flaw and results in his death
• Another rule is the easy attainment of love makes it of little value, difficulty of attainment makes it prized
• Lovers are to suffer palpitations when they see their true love, and Romeo certainly gets excited when he first meets Juliet
• A true lover is constantly and without intermission possessed by the thought of his beloved, which is also evident in Romeo who thinks of nothing else throughout the play except a moment of revenge when Mercutio is killed by Tybalt
• In Elizabethan times, children were expected to obey their parents who in turn obeyed the monarch and God
• When Juliet refuses to marry Paris, her father flies into a rage and threatens her with disownment and death
• During the early Renaissance, dueling established the status of a respectable gentleman and was an accepted manner to resolve disputes
• Dueling remained highly popular in European society despite various attempts at banning the practice
• Tybalt believes Romeo's presence in Act 1 Scene 5 is a significant enough slight on his honor to make challenging Romeo to a duel reasonable
• Rapiers were not especially common weapons in Elizabethan England, but they were a status symbol associated with the aristocracy and growing in popularity
• With so many men carrying weapons, it is not surprising that fights often broke out, similar to Act 1 Scene 1 in the play
• Mercutio scorns Tybalt for his pretentious and highly stylized method of fighting in Act 3 Scene 1, describing him as fighting by the book of arithmetic, which was the rule book of rapier fighting
• Rapiers were fast and precise, not for wild cutting or cleaving, and would produce deep internal wounds, which is how Mercutio dies
• There is evidence that men were expected to be violent, which was a way for them to preserve their honor as well as defend their home and good name
• Urban violence was a huge issue during Shakespeare's lifetime, and the most famous playwright of the time, Christopher Marlowe, was killed by a stab wound to the head in a pub fight in Deptford, London
• Resisting the urge to fight as Romeo initially does when challenged by Tybalt could be a legitimate legal response, but went against masculine expectations
• Romeo seems to accept that Tybalt's insults and his failure to accept the challenge has stained his reputation, perhaps because Shakespeare wanted to preserve a sense of his innocence and show that Romeo was not yet fully matured