# Are Romeo and Juliet really supposed to be seen as in love? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 14, 2006, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-romeo-and-juliet-really-supposed-to-be-seen-as-in-love/344453 "2006-02-14T15:37:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2013, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-romeo-and-juliet-really-supposed-to-be-seen-as-in-love/344453/61 "2013-02-23T04:55:51Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > How about if they both kinda liked _Breakfast at Tiffany’s?_ Movie, novella, or stage musical? ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2013, 7:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-romeo-and-juliet-really-supposed-to-be-seen-as-in-love/344453/62 "2013-02-23T07:14:50Z")
> [@Strinka](#): > > 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? YES The audience that attended the theatre in Shakespeare’s time would indeed believe they were in love. A common belief at the time was that love can be caught like an infection. By breathing in love it infects you and changes you instantly. Look at the characters in Twelfth Night. Viola, just barely survives a shipwreck, in which she thinks her brother died. But she sees Orsino and falls in love with him. Olivia, morning the death of her brothers, sees Viola, dressed as a man, and falls out of mourning and into love. Orsino, although he thinks Viola is a guy, starts to "feel funny’ about him. But the love infection is overcoming him. Olivia, doesn’t mind being switched from disguised Viola to her twin brother because, well, she’s infected with love. Most Shakespeare plays deal with love and the different kinds of love. Romantic love, brotherly love, parental love (or lack thereof). ---
**Author:** ![Arkcon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Arkcon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arkcon)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2013, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-romeo-and-juliet-really-supposed-to-be-seen-as-in-love/344453/63 "2013-02-23T21:37:26Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > I’ve read several scholars with that take. Had Juliet listened to her parents she’d have had an arranged marriage but with a guy who seems to genuinely care about her and ultimately she and everybody else is happy; Given that bit, and Juliette’s dialog at the beginning, when her parents suggest marriage and falling in love with their choice, and she demurely says that she thinks, if she has to, that she can fall in love, if its at all possible … or words to that effect … If she can fall in love at parental command, why can’t she fall in love with someone who woos her from under her balcony? Romeo is a poet, that was like, the ultimate intellectual aspiration for the time period. And he’s rich, she’s rich, they’re marriageable age – why not marry, try to reproduce. Odds are fair that it’ll work fine, and Juliette won’t die in childbirth, or Romeo of the plague, or the child of a childhood disease … 'tho not a guarantee this disasters won’t befall them, so there’s no point in wasting time. Basically, if some modern pop star (cough - Taylor Swift) decides to pick up a random teenaged Kennedy, even if the parents don’t like it, who’s gonna stop them … and that’s a modern tale, with all the baggage against young marriage we’ve added in the interim centuries. Asimov’s take is interesting. Consider – the priest is all for this plan, because he believes it will end the feud. This to our minds helps validate the premise. But consider: we assume the Catholic priest has a noble ideal (or at least I bought it), we accept that the time and place period accepts the priest as moral authority figure. But would Elizabethan audiences have accepted it as so? Or was that just another facet of the mockery of the romantic trope that Shakespeare has set up? ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2013, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-romeo-and-juliet-really-supposed-to-be-seen-as-in-love/344453/64 "2013-02-23T22:35:13Z")
Weren’t arranged marriages still the norm in R & J’s time period? I always saw R & J as infatuated with each other. A passing fancy until they married whoever their families picked. ---
**Author:** ![Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulf_the_Unwashed)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2013, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-romeo-and-juliet-really-supposed-to-be-seen-as-in-love/344453/65 "2013-02-23T23:32:23Z")
> [@Zebra](#): > > Romantic love, brotherly love, parental love (or lack thereof). Or if we may rewrite your lines in properly versical form: Romantic love Brotherly love Parental love (or lack thereof)… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-romeo-and-juliet-really-supposed-to-be-seen-as-in-love/344453.md?page=3)