At the very beginning of the play, Romeo is all heartbroken because he’s in love with a woman who doesn’t love him back. And the very instant he sees Juliet, he falls out of love with that other girl (sorry, I’m not good at remembering character names) and in love with Juliet. Given that, it seems like just a teenage crush. They say they’re in love of course, because they think they are. But is the audience supposed to believe it?
That’s an excellent question. My take on it has always been they were infatuated, and took it too seriously.
There’s a play (not sure of the title - something like “Goodnight Desdemona, Good morning Juliet”) that has lots of Shakespeare characters in it, including Romeo and Juliet. They keep falling stone-cold in love with every new person they see - pretty funny.
I always assumed they weren’t, that it was a crush, yes. That ( IMHO ) is what makes it such a tragedy - they both died for each other, yet if they’d stayed together they would inevitably realise they weren’t actually in love; instead of two people dying ( but dying for love ), it’s two people who were just pretty heavily crushing on each other. Their deaths weren’t only senseless, but pointless, too.
Don’t forget that Romeo and Juliet are meant to be teenagers.
Isaac Asimov, in Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare, posited a theory I’ve never seen elsewhere: The play is really about the folly of romanticism. Several clues indicate the Montague-Capulet feud is on its last legs and only a few psychos like Tybault are keeping it alive. Viz., the scene where Romeo crashes Capulet’s party, Act I, Scene 5 – http://www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/romeo_juliet/romeo_juliet.1.5.html:
In the next moment, Romeo sees and falls for Juliet. He probably could go to her father and sue openly for her hand. But she is all excited about having a secret forbidden romance between star-crossed lovers from two houses at variance, and Romeo foolishly indulges her, with tragic consequences.
Rosaline.
R & J is a “15 minute” play. If any character, at any time, had waited 15 minutes before doing something, the play would have been quite different. 
Yes, they are. Shakespeare was writing in a culture where people genuinely believed in love at first sight, or at the very least, it was an extremely common literary trope that people were perfectly willing to accept in fiction. Besides, they didn’t really have a sense of adolescent psychology as such; Romeo and Juliet are young adults in Renaissance eyes, not “teenagers.”
This isn’t to say that they didn’t make a distinction between real love and “fancy,” or that they hadn’t observed that young people have a tendency to go through a succession of passing fancies; Friar Laurence’s “young men’s love then lies / Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes” line is ample evidence that they did. What Romeo feels for Rosaline is definitely fancy, but I think it’s clear we’re meant to understand his feelings for Juliet as deeper and more lasting. The tip-off is the fact that his poetry gets a lot better after she comes along – he drops the obligatory Petrarchan paradoxes and starts to sound like a real human being. Compare this passage from I.i. (in which he really seems to be in love with “love” in the abstract, not with Rosaline):
to this one from the wedding scene (II. vi.)
This is a young man who has grown up very fast, and is beginning to realize the weight of what he has done and the sacrifice that he is prepared to make.
Without analyzing the play (not that I could), I’ll just say that modern drama (turn on your TV) has tons of stuff that is improbable but the audience is asked to belief something that everybody knows wouldn’t really happen–“suspend your disbelief.”
Gargoyles?
Hmm…can I get all SDMB-y on you and scream “cite” at the top of my lungs? I’d remark that in Shakespeare’s era, love wasn’t as common a trope as it is today. Marriages were often arranged and “true love”, although the concept existed, didn’t seem to be as important in his plays as most people assume it is. Some read “Twelfth Night” as a story of true love, others as a veritable handbook on “marrying up.” I don’t think it’s that cut & dry.
[I blew it] Sorry for the terrible coding. [/I blew it]
My high school English teacher taught it that way, at least on Romeo’s part. I remember him saying that Romeo would fall in “love” with any pretty girl he saw. I don’t remember discussing Juliet’s motivations in the same way, but we very well might have.
I like Asimov’s take on it, too.
The idea of romantic love went back to the Middle Ages. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtly_love; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romantic_love) I recall reading that Eleanor of Aquitaine held a “Court of Love” devoted to discussing such conundra as, “Is connubial [marital] love possible?” That one was answered in the negative. A knight-errant might fall in love with a lady, but in almost all cases she would be some other lord’s wife. That was how it was supposed to go.
What was just emerging in Shakespeare’s time was the idea that love should have anything to do with marriage.
I think you could interpret the relationship as either true love or as infatuation. It’s not the only case in Shakespeare where multiple interpretations are possible: look at all the theories on why Hamlet delays his revenge for his father’s death, on on Hamlet relarionship with Ophelia.
A third interpretation is provided by the parallel relationship between Will Shakespeare and Viola De Lesseps in the film Shakespeare in Love: that it’s a relationship which is fun at the time, but which reality (like your father deciding that the County Paris or Lord Wessex is a better match) might later intrude on.
I believe that Romeo felt he was truly in love with Juliet – I think the closest to proof that Shakespere intended it be taken as true love was Friar Lawrence’s complicity in the marriage. He knew of Romeo’s prediliction for falling in and out of love, but something about this was definitely different.
While modern psychology can give insights into Shakespere’s characters, it isn’t always the best way to understand them.
In brief, I believe we are to accept them as fully in love with one another and willing to die or suffer whatever society would heap upon them for it.
I’m not saying the idea of love didn’t exist, I’m just saying that it wasn’t as universal a theme as it is. I mean, recall the last 10 Hollywood movies you’ve seen and I bet at least nine of them ended up with the main character falling in love. What I’m saying is we’re thrusting our current lionization (word?) of love onto are era where that theme was less used and fairly unrealistic. Shakespeare, to me, seems to be providing caution about young emotions running wild than telling us true love equals happiness. This was a tragedy, after all…
I look it like this: it’s Shakespear. It’s like asking if Hamlet is a tragic hero or a neurotic git. You can read it either way. That’s why you can keep reading Shakespear over and over.
That’s a good point. I mean that a lot of Shakespear play can be read as comments…or at least reflections of the plays of his time; the romantic play, the revenge play, the Jews are evil play.
I think you can say it was meant to be read as a tragic (sincere) romance, but it’s just like Shakespear to sneak disarming complexities in there.
It’s not that it’s improbable, I think we’re just meant to wonder “are these two particular people in love?” I don’t think the audience is supposed to doubt that Juliet loves Romeo. She sets everything else aside for him pretty quickly - her family, her obligations, her trust for the nurse who raised her, and so on. She risks a lot on a guy who’s a little questionable.
So I do think that we’re meant to wonder about Romeo because he’s harder to trust from an audience perspective. Not only do we know about Rosaline (and any of the girls before her), we know that he’s just a passionate guy in general, and he doesn’t think things through. I don’t doubt that his feelings for Juliet are sincere, and I wouldn’t say it’s just a crush. Maybe it’s the first time somebody’s returned his love, and even with the poetry, I can’t be totally sure he grows up that fast.
I don’t think modern audiences truly grasp the enormity of that. To defy one’s family meant that you were bringing deep shame on your family. You might never see them again. Their social network would have collapsed. (Parents would forbid their daughters to speak with such a wicked girl as Juliet.)
There were not only social, but economic repercussions-- the families lost dowry and bride gifts as well as the income which could come from alliances with other families. Not only that, breaking a betrothal was nearly as serious as a divorce. Juliet’s father lost a lot of credibility when his daughter failed to follow through on a promised marriage. He also looked bad in the eyes of the community-- didn’t he raise his daughter properly?
For those two, eloping would have meant a life of almost certain poverty. (Folks in that class didn’t just go out and get a job, and secondly, the apprentice/master system meant that finding a decent one was unlikely.) There was no insurance-- if Romeo died, Juliet would have been utterly impoverished and completely alone. Families were often the providers of medical care-- if she fell ill, who would nurse her? If both of them died, who would feed their children?
I don’t think so. Romeo wasn’t doing anything to alienate his family.