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Well, it depends on your definition of a good match!

For the inner romantics in us—the poets and dreamers who have looked to Shakespeare's tale of the star-crossed lovers as the pinnacle of true love—Romeo and Juliet certainly represent a once-in-a-lifetime romance, a meeting of two kindred souls, and a tragic tale of soulmates separated by circumstances.

Yet, for the inner academic, scholar, or even mere logical inquirer, Romeo and Juliet may seem more like two rash teenagers who are blinded by their impulsivity and youth in choosing a life partner. When we look at the facts of the tale, we can see that perhaps they were not so well-suited for each other. Romeo had believed himself smitten with a different woman, Rosaline, just hours before meeting Juliet. Their "love" seemed to occur at first sight—a sure sign of pheromones and hormones dangerously at work!—rather than developing gradually over time. Their respective families—a key cornerstone of the successful integration of partnerships at the time—detested each other. Finally, the functionality of their relationship depended far too greatly on urgency, perfect timing, and secrecy. We can see how these factors drove them dangerously to death rather than a contented married life together.

Ultimately, it's interesting to read this text through the lens of a teenager versus the lens of an adult. As a fourteen-year-old reading Romeo and Juliet for the first time, I felt devastated over the idea of lost love between the two. Yet, as an adult, a writer, and an educator reading the play thirteen years later, I feel more bereft over a different kind of loss present in the text: the loss of the opportunity for our two protagonists to grow and mature, to make mistakes and to recover from them, and to see themselves flourishing in adulthood. How many of us, if we could, would choose the summer flirtations of our youth as our spouses over the dimensional, flawed yet loving partners that certainly await us in our more mature years? I definitely would not! For that reason, I would say that while I can understand Romeo and Juliet's initial attraction to each other, I do not believe they were a good match.

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This is a fascinating question. I am going to say they are not a good match for each other. This is because they are too alike. They are both impulsive, impatient, and far too attracted to the other. Each one falls madly in love during their very first meeting, and each one hardly takes a moment to think carefully about the implications of what they are doing. They know their love is a forbidden love, but they hardly care. Juliet is a little more thoughtful about the dangers they face than Romeo, but this thoughtfulness is not enough to stop her from the rash move of marrying Romeo almost as soon as she meets him. 

Despite the efforts of the friar and Juliet's nurse to tamp them down, both Romeo and Juliet are wildly impatient to get married. They cannot keep their hands off each other. If one of them had been more cautious and had put the brakes on the romance in order to give each of them time to think more clearly, they might not have both ended up dead. 

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