Juliet's Age As Symbol in Romeo and Juliet

"Too soon marr'd": Juliet's Age as Symbol in Romeo and Juliet J. KARL FRANSON The tender age of Juliet Gapulet provides the focus of the initial conversation between Lord Capulet and Count Paris in Romeo and Juliet. She is still a child, says her father, "a straunger in the world" who "hath not seene the chaunge of fourteen yeares"; she should be at least 16, he says, before she will be ready for marriage.' In Shakespeare's primary source, a long narrative poem by Brooke, she is 16 (or nearly so), and in another English version he might have known, the translation of a novella by Bandello, she is almost 18, yet in both accounts she is still considered too young for marriage.^ A very young Juliet, there- I wish to acknowledge the generous assistance of Lester R. Dickey, Robert L. Lively, Jr., Thomas P. Roche, Jr., John T. Shawcross, and my wife, Jeanine F. Franson, all of whom read earlier drafts of this study and offered valuable suggestions. It is dedicated to my granddaughter Rachel M. Pope. 'Sig. B2'; 1.2.8-11. The edition cited in this study is the authoritative Second Quarto (Q2), reprinted in facsimile in Shakespeare's Plays in Quarto, with the exception of 1.2.53-1.3.34, forwhich the First Quarto, the primary authority, is cited; the occasional italic type of the quartos is not reproduced. For convenience in locating passages discussed, citations from 77!*? Riverside Shakespeare (hereafter, Riverside) are also provided. •* Arthur Brooke, The Tragicall Histmye ofRomeus and Juliet (1562, repr. 1587), 1. I860; Matteo Bandello, "The Goodly History of the True, and Constant Loue between Rhomeo and Iulietta" (1567), p. 372; citations from Brooke are verse numbers, from Bandello (prose), page numbers. Bandello's version in novellaiorm, first appeared in 1554, was translated into French by Boaistuau in 1559 and into English by William Painter in 1567. Shakespeare was familiar with Painter's Palace of Pleasure, but seems to have relied almost exclusively upon Brooke's poem (Kermode 1055), which is also an adaptation of the French translation of Bandello. An insightful overview ofjuliet's extreme youth can be found in Levenson (65-69). Modern directors emphasizing the importance of Juliet's youth to the play's success on stage or screen include Castellani (seejorgensen 112), Brook (255), and Zeffirelli (257). 244 "Too soon marr'd" PLL 245 fore, appears to bave been Sbakespeare's idea. Is it to empbasize tbe "cbarm of ber girlisb directness, tbe patbos of ber passion," to amplify tbe drama of ber progress from innocence to suicide, or merely to "apologize to tbe audience for tbe boy wbo played so difficult a part"?^ As for Romeo's age, Sbakespeare makes bim merely a "yong" man (E3'^; 2.4.119), wbereas Brooke describes bim as so young bis "tender cbyn" sports no beard (54), tbus perbaps 15-17, and Bandello gives bis age as 20 or 21 (349). Tbe notion tbat Elizabetban couples married young bas been cballenged recently by social bistorians. Altbougb tbe setting oi Romeo and Juliet appesirs to be early 14tb Gentury Italy, Sbakespeare's cultural model is primarily Elizabetban England, wbere pbysical maturity developed later tban it does today: girls matured at 14-15, boys at 16-18. Youtbs under 15 were still considered cbildren. Tbe earliest legal age for marriage, tbe age of consent or discretion, was 14, but early teenage marriages were rare, and in tbe few cases on record, tbe cbildren were eitber not formally betrotbed or not allowed to consummate tbeir vows until mucb older.^ Popular manuals of bealtb, as well as observations of married life, led Elizabetbans to believe tbat early marriage and its consummation permanently damaged ayoung woman's bealtb, impaired a young man's pbysical and mental development, and produced sickly or stunted cbildren. In opposing tbe marriage of ber 13-year-old granddaugbter, Anne Glopton alludes to tbe "danger [tbat] migbt ensue to ber very life from ber extreme 'Bullough 279; McDonald 265; C. Brown 42. ''The ages of physical maturity are given by Stone, Family 492; Everett 116; and Cook 17, 20. Stone identifies the age of "childhood" in England during this period (Family 512). Citing the Caworaiof 1571, Baldwin gives 14 as the age of consent for both males and females (773); see also The Oxford English Dictionary (hereafter, OED-2), "Discre- tion," sense 6h, which gives 14 for both sexes as the age of discretion. Both Stone (Crisis 652) and Camden (93) give 12 for females and 14 for males as the ages of consent. Laslett notes the prohibition against consummation of childhood marriages (81-86). For further information on early marriage during this period, see Stone, Crisis 589- 671. 246 PLL J. Karl Franson youth" (Stone, Crisis 656). Capulet echoes such a concern in telling Paris, "Too soone mard are those so early made" (B2'^; 1.2.13). The general view was that motherhood before 16 was dangerous (Stone, Crisis 656-57); as a consequence, 18 came to be considered the earliest reasonable age for motherhood (Camden 94), and 20 and 30 the ideal ages for women and men, respectively, to marry (Cook 23). In actuality, however, Elizabethan women married even later, at an average age of 25-26, and men at 27-29, the oldest of any society known.^ Shakespeare's wife and eldest daughter Susanna are typical, marrying at about 26 and 24, while his youngest, Judith, did not marry until 31. That Capulet would offer his daughter to Paris despite her "extreme youth," thus forcing Juliet to marry Romeo secretly, must have been appall- ing to an Elizabethan. One historian even wonders whether Shakespeare was deliberately writing a play about the dangers of love and marriage among boys and girls.^ The playwright's own unsatisfactory marriage at 18 may have initiated him to some of the unpleasant consequences of premature marriage. Shakespeare's alteration of Juliet's age and deliberate disre- gard of social custom seem to single out her age for special attention (Cook 28). An obvious consequence is to lessen the young couple's responsibility for the disaster that engulfs them (Muir 171-72). Yet beyond this, Shakespeare's symbolic use of Juliet's age casts over the lovers an ominous shadow, clearly implied in Capulet's prediction that ignoring natural and social practice invites disaster. Ignoble of him, then, to become the pander for Paris, even though he considers the Count a highly suitable match for Juliet. For his part, Paris apparently wishes to 'See Laslett 82; Stone, Family 490; Cook 265-67; and Ben-Amos 5. Hiil observes that no other known society married so late (195), and Stone offers several explanations for this (CroM 652-60). •"Laslett 84. Other Shakespeare heroines who marry young are Marina in Pericles, who is 14 (13', quarto of 1609; 5.3.75), and Miranda in The Tempest, who is 15 (A', First Folio: 1.2.40-41,53-54). "Too soon marr'd" PLL 247 marryjuliet immediately to forestall rivals in securing the Capulet estate. Brooke's Capulet tells his wife they must hasten to procure their 16-year-old Juliet a husband to assuage her grief over Tybalt's death, also because "a mayden daughter is a treasour daungerous" (1862). Since Shakespeare's Juliet has not reached even the age of consent, much less the minimum age for marriage, the frequent use of her age within the play must be considered a deliberate attempt to represent the disturbing untimeliness of the marriage. Unquestionably Shakespeare wished the play to convey a sense of inevitability. His success at doing so, however, derives not only from the power of coincidence, fate, feud, and stars, but also from the "child" Juliet's forced entrance into adulthood: "too rash, too vnaduisd, too sudden," as she herself admits (DS"; 2.2.118). The "rash, premature assumption of maturity," Cook observes, "plunges them into the bitterly complicated consequences that always attend adult behavior" (29). Juliet's being still a child, albeit a precocious one, communicates "the sense of extremity, of a painful too-soonness" (Everett 117). The Nurse's daughter Susan, had she lived, would have been the same age as Juliet (B4\ Ql; 1.3.18-20), so as Spencer notes, "Shakespeare thinks of the Nurse as one who had a daughter nearly fourteen years ago" (184), thus conjuring up images of untimely death and a correspondence between birth and death (Everett 115). Only one other character's age is given in the text, that of Lady Capulet. While speaking of marriage, she says to her daughter, "I was your mother much vpon these yeares / That you are now a maide" (B4^; 1.3.72-73). If this be true. Lady Capulet conceived Juliet when she was about 13, gave birth at 14, and is now 28.'^ These numbers, when considered in light of Juliet's 'Lady Capulet's claim to being 28 may be vain pretense to project a false youthfulness, particularly in view ofher apparent inability to bear more children (B2^; 1.2.14-15). Hints she is older than 28 might be detected in the Q2 stage prefixes, where she is sometimes identified as "Old La." (e.g., B4'); or her lament at Juliet's 'death': "O me, this sight of death, is as a Bell / That warnes my old age to a sepulcher" (L4''; 5.3.206-7). 248 PLL J. Karl Franson own marriage and consummation at 13, suggest a correspondence between Lady Capulet and her daughter, possibly the older woman's attempt at saddling Juliet with her own destiny (Dash 70-71).

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