context

• shakespeare didn't wait till marriage and his wife was 3 months pregnat and 8 years older than him showing that he does not follow traditional attitudes towards relationships. he wants the auidence to critical of it through viewing romeo and juliets relationship throughout the play
• shakespeare wrote the play based of a poem where juliet is 16 not 13. shakespeare ages her down to represent the fragility of young love and her immaturity as it allows him to explore how men exploit women through controlling their sexual expression and virginity as maidhead has value in elizabeth marriages.
• Tragedy


  • Common characteristics:
  • Catharsis - purging of pity and fear among the audience through the action of the play
  • Hamartia - tragic error made by the character that leads to disaster
• Senecan tragedy


  • Bloody and sensationalist elements, such as the fight in Act 1 and the bloody ending
• Why Shakespeare set plays in foreign lands


  Allowed him to critique society and the monarchy without being accused of treason, and explore subversive themes with greater ease
• Catholicism in Verona


  Italy was known for its Catholicism, which was viewed negatively by the Protestant English audience due to the war with Catholic Spain
• Religion was central to Elizabethan life and would have had a great bearing on the considerations of the morality of Romeo and Juliet's affair
• Suicide in the Elizabethan era


  There was a gradual waning of vehement Christian views against it
• The concept of sin pervades Juliet's refusal to obey her father and the young couple epitomising the sin of hubris
• The tragic ending can be seen as a manifestation and re-assertion of traditional Christian Divine Justice
• Elizabethan worldview


  • Earth was the centre of the universe, supported by religious teaching and astronomical knowledge
• Position of women


  Seen as lesser than men, with increased propensity towards sin and lower on the Great Chain of Being
• Objectification of women


  Seen as property and sexual objects to satisfy their husbands
• Importance of marriage


  Girls in wealthy families were seen as a means of making links with other rich families
• Petrarchan love


  Unrequited love, with the woman expected to reject the man's advances
• Courtly love


  Idealized love at first sight and dying for one's true love, but undermined by the presence of sex in Romeo and Juliet's relationship
• It was the role of the woman to reject the man's advances, if she did not she was breaking social norms
• Petrarchan lover


  A man who pursues a woman who does not reciprocate his love
• Romeo is a Petrarchan lover in his pursuit of Rosaline and Juliet (at first, though when Juliet accepts him, the love becomes reciprocated and therefore no longer Petrarchan)
• Loving marriage


  The best way to achieve a moral life, representing a movement away from the traditional fixation on chastity as the ideal of morality
• Courtly love


  Incorporates ideas such as love at first sight and dying for one's true love. It was a Medieval ideal or, at least, an ideal which was imposed on the Middle Ages during the Renaissance.
• The presence of sex in Romeo and Juliet's relationship somewhat undermines the idealisation of selfless and romantic love
• Rules a man was supposed to follow to show he was really in love in courtly love


  • The man cannot eat or sleep when he is in love and isolates himself
  • The man forgets his old love when a new love comes along
  • The man sends love letters or speaks in poetry when he is in love
• Romeo displays characteristics typical of a courtly lover
• Sonnet structure


  Usually associated with romantic love, characterising Romeo and Juliet's love as something special
• Erotic love (eros)


  Epitomised in Romeo and Juliet's sexual encounters
• Selfless, coupling love (agape)

  Selfless love
• Shakespeare's time saw a move towards marriages formed from love rather than out of duty to one's family. The play may be seen as the epitome of this ideal
• Wooing


  The process of impressing a woman so she wants to be with you
• Fate


  A central concept in Elizabethan society, where some greater force (God, the stars etc.) was believed to control one's destiny
• Calvinists believed in predestination, the idea that God has a great plan in which we all have our courses and salvation (election) determined
• Astrology


  The study of the positions and aspects of various celestial bodies, leading to the supposition that the movement of the Spheres determined one's fate
• Prominent astrologers at the time included Dr. John Dee and Edward Kelly
• Violence


  Explicit violence was a far more public affair in Elizabethan times than it is today, as the state employed violence readily in dispatching criminals
• Suicide was both condemned as sinful, and yet the society was incredibly fascinated in it
• People in Elizabethan England were attracted by instances of violence in plays and in the public sphere, possibly creating a need within the society to see more
• R.A. Foakes: '"His plays may be seen as following a trajectory that [a] begins with a delight in representing violence for entertainment, [b] continues in a series of plays that explore various aspects of the problem of violence, and [c] ends with a searching study of human aggression in relation to self-control"'
• Romeo struggles with the concept of violence throughout the play unlike other characters who seem to go out looking for it
• The concept of revenge through violence is debated by many characters, both male and female, who have different views on it
• The Montague-Capulet feud appeals to an archetype of two warring families/countries / clans etc., which is a pertinent image for both an Elizabethan and a modern day audience