Romeo and Juliet (Vol. 65) - Martin Goldstein (essay date 1996)
Martin Goldstein (essay date 1996)
SOURCE: Goldstein, Martin. “The Tragedy of Old Capulet: A Patriarchal Reading of Romeo and Juliet.” English Studies 77, no. 3 (May 1996): 227-39.
[In the following essay, Goldstein suggests that the driving force of the play is not the ancient feud between the Capulets and Montagues, but rather a conflict internal to the Capulet family, specifically, the disagreement between Capulet and Lady Capulet over who and when Juliet should marry.]
‘I know not how Capulet and his Lady might agree, their ages were very disproportionate; he has been past masking for thirty years, and her age, as she tells Juliet … is but eight and twenty’.
Samuel Johnson, in Notes to the Plays
Romeo and Juliet provides the paradigm—or myth, in one sense of the word—of a love affair between members of rival houses caught up in the implacable hostility of a...
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