SOURCE: James, Max H. “Chastened Children: Family as Metaphor in Romeo and Juliet.” In ‘Our House Is Hell’: Shakespeare's Troubled Families, pp. 1-19. New York: Greenwood Press, 1989.

[In the following essay, James interprets Shakespeare's demonstration of family conflict in Romeo and Juliet as a metaphorical study of disobedience and strife among young and old.]

Shakespeare's families are deeply troubled, with scarcely a single whole and healthy family to be found in the entire corpus of his plays. The swelling tide of historical and sociological studies of family life in earlier ages, including the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, forbids the simpleminded conclusion that the “crisis of the family” is only a late-twentieth-century phenomenon. Although their natures certainly vary from age to age, family problems are profound and pervasive in every age. In her poignant declaration, “Our house is hell,” Shylock's daughter, Jessica, speaks painfully but appropriately for almost all of Shakespeare's families, including those of Romeo and Juliet, or, more precisely, including that of Romeo and Juliet, for ultimately the play forces one to see family as metaphor: the entire populace of Verona as one family, all as unruly children—not merely the impetuous young lovers, but the parents and their relatives and friends, and the Prince—all requiring chastisement in love.

THE BODY POLITIC AS FAMILY

The family was undergoing significant change in Shakespeare's day. Although practically every assertion is met with a counterassertion in the increasingly controversial sociohistorical family studies, a growth industry in its own right, all agree on the fact of change in western-European families between 1500 and 1700, including those of England. The debate over the nature of the extended family versus the nuclear family as a part of that change is not relevant here, but the fresh enhancement of the power of patriarchy, reinforced by both church and state, is central to many of the family problems in Shakespeare's plays and especially pertinent to Romeo and Juliet. Patriarchalism was certainly not a new concept in Shakespeare's age; it was not unique to the Reformation, not even to Christianity, nor, for that matter, to the western world.

Patriarchalism has been a human phenomenon for centuries, in both east and west, unquestionably reinforced by both Judaism and Christianity as the Judeo-Christian culture emerged in the west. Nevertheless, patriarchy received powerful fresh impetus in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries from both the rise of the national state and the Reformation. The authoritarian state articulated by the Tudors and the Stuarts delighted to parallel the role of the ruler, on the one hand to that of God, and on the other to that of a father. Shakespeare was but citing standard doctrine when he has Gaunt say:

God's is the quarrel, for God's substitute,
His deputy anointed in his sight,
Hath caus'd his death, the which if wrongfully,
Let heaven revenge, for I may never lift
An angry arm against His minister.

(Richard II, I.ii.37-41)

So was James I when, in a statement to Parliament on 21 March 1610, he declared that kings “are not only GODS Lieutenants upon earth, and sit upon GODS throne, but even by GOD himself they are called GODS,” and “Kings are also compared to Fathers of families: for a King is truly Parens Patriae, the politic father of his people” (cited by Bergeron, who retained original spellings, 28). In commenting upon Robert Filmer's Patriarcha, Jonathan Goldberg remarks, “For him [Filmer], the king is quite literally the father of his country, for parents are ‘natural magistrates’ and children are ‘natural subjects’ … and kings simply act within the ‘natural law of a Father’ … in making their absolute claims to obedience” (85).

Similarly, the Reformation reinforced the patriarchal power of those in authority in several ways, but chiefly two. First, although the Roman Catholic Church unquestionably stressed the authority of the father and other authority figures, it also taught that the highest calling was celibacy, not married life, and, therefore, many thought the family was fundamentally a concession to human weakness. The Protestants stressed the centrality of the married state; the role of the father was not weakened by any implied inherently second-class condition of spirituality. Second, although the Reformation taught the priesthood of all believers, each having no ultimate mediator between God and man save Jesus Christ, yet fathers had a peculiarly heavy responsibility to act as the “priest” for those in their households, especially for women and children. The Reformation attempted to eliminate the demarcation between sacred and secular callings by declaring all callings sacred, and now responsibility rested not upon the church as an institution but upon individual believers; yet, within the “natural” patterns of authority set forth in the Bible—kings, fathers, husbands, masters—the power that had formerly been ministered through the church was to be administered throughout all segments of society by authority figures. When, in God and the King, Richard Mocket declared all subjects were children of the king and were thus ordered by the Fifth Commandment to honor and obey him, “James I was so delighted with this book that he ordered it to be studied in schools and universities and bought by all householders, thus ensuring it a very wide sale” (Stone, Family 152). Children learned in their catechism that the Fifth Commandment applied to authority figures in society as well as to their actual parents:

TEACHER:
Show therefore in the first place who are meant by these titles of father and mother.
STUDENT:
First our natural parents, by whom as the instruments of God, we have received our being and life. And then also all those which in any respect are in stead of parents unto us for the preservation, direction, and comfort of life.
TEACHER:
Who are they, whom we ought to account to be to us in stead of parents, according to this commandment of God?
STUDENT:
First, civil Magistrates in the commonwealth, such as are sovereign Kings and Princes, with their Judges and Justices, and in all public office under them. Secondly, Pastors and teachers of the word in the Church of God, with all that have government and charge of souls, together with them according to the same holy word. Thirdly, schoolmasters and teachers of the tongues, and other liberal Arts, as also such as have the wardship & government of fatherless children: and likewise masters of manual trades and occupations.

(Allen 120)

In these ways did both church and state drastically reinforce patriarchalism and force the people of Shakespeare's day, and Shakespeare himself, to think of the body politic as a family.

“CIVIL BRAWLS,” A FAMILY AFFAIR

The family, therefore, is a natural metaphor for all of Verona in Romeo and Juliet, and that Shakespeare encourages that concept can be seen both early and late. It is not necessary to argue that Shakespeare consciously knew the fact that “civil” ultimately derives from a Proto-Indo-European word meaning “to rest” and from that, “home,” for one to see that “civil” is a key word in many Shakespearean plays, including Romeo and Juliet, where it occurs five times, more than in any other play except 2 Henry IV, where it also occurs five times. In the entire corpus of Shakespearean drama, the word appears fifty-one times, thirteen times meaning something like “well-mannered” or “well-behaved,” four times meaning “serious” or “grave” or “decorous,” and thirty-four times usually referring something very painful to contemplate: conflict, strife, or war where harmony and peace ought to reign. Thus it is used in the Prologue to Romeo and Juliet: “Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean” (4). On occasions, the “civil war” is within the same individual, as in Sonnet 35, where “to thy sensual fault I bring in sense—/ Thy adverse party is thy advocate—/ And 'gainst myself a lawful plea commence, / Such civil war is in my love and hate” (9-12). So it is also in King John when Pandulph hears that King Philip of France has “deep-sworn faith, peace, amity, true love” between his kingdom and that of John: “So mak'st thou faith an enemy to faith, / And like a civil war set'st oath to oath, / Thy tongue against thy tongue” (III.i.263-265). Within the entity of the individual, there should be unity, harmony, and peace, not strife. But strife too frequently prevails, destroying the “rest” of home; the place where peace should reign is itself the battlefield, as Venus argues with the reluctant Adonis: “So in thyself art made away, / A mischief worse than civil home-bred strife, / Or theirs whose desperate hands themselves do slay, / Or butcher sire that reaves his son of life” (“Venus and Adonis” 763-766).

Again and again, Shakespeare's characters lament “civil wounds” or “civil broil” or “civil brawls,” as in this play, or “civil war” as the curse of the community made up of “kindred,” the extended body politic, the extended family. And thus in “fair Verona,” because two households refuse to recognize that they are really one, the parents, pouting and quarreling, bring chastisement upon themselves and the entire city. They are, despite themselves, made one and forced to recognize their sibling relationship inside the larger family of the city. The foolish and wicked “parents' strife” from “parents' rage” has to be disciplined in and through their children, for the “iniquity of the fathers” will be visited upon the children. Romeo and Juliet, the intensely sweet young lovers whose love seems purer than driven snow, are impetuous and headstrong, consciously rebellious against the will of their parents, and, indeed, suffer the dire consequences of their hot-blooded rash rebellion, but they are simultaneously the very instruments through which the wise “heaven,” like a loving father, chastises the rash rebellion of their parents. “For whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth: & he scourgeth every son that he receiveth. … Now no chastising for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: but afterwards, it bringeth the quiet fruit of righteousness, unto them which are thereby exercised” (Hebrews 12:6 and 11, Geneva Bible). And so all Verona finally comes to recognize its one-family set of relationships as “All are punish'd” (V.iii.295).

THE CHASTENING OF CHILDREN: “ALL ARE PUNISH'D”

The chastisement of children was a major feature of child-rearing during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Both severity and frequency increased during this period, resulting from the enlarged power of coercion residing in the authority of fathers in particular and of other authority figures in general. Jean-Louis Flandrin cites the jurist Pierre Ayrault concerning the power of fathers: “domestic discipline, in which the father is like a dictator, has decreed that from his voice shall depend all that is subject to him” (130). Flandrin quotes Guillaume de Vair, the Guardian of the Seals, as writing “we should consider fathers as gods on earth,” and he declares that Jean Bodin carried that same concept only to its ultimate logical end by demanding that fathers of families be restored the power of life and death which had been theirs until abolished in late antiquity by Christian emperors (130). Aristotle viewed a household as “all persons subject to the authority of its chief—slaves and servants as well as spouse and blood relatives” (Herlihy 2). The Latin familia “designates everything and everybody under the authority (patria potestas) of the household head. Familia in classical usage is often synonymous with patrimony” (Herlihy 2).

Children were considered naturally stubborn and full of pride that had to be broken down. “During the period from 1540 to 1660 there is a great deal of evidence especially from Puritans, of a fierce determination to break the will of the child, and to enforce his utter subjection to the authority of his elders and superiors, and most especially of his parents” (Stone, Family 162). Flogging became the substitute for fines in the fifteenth century for the poor who were unable to pay their fines and, anyway, who were considered socially suitable for physical punishment. From the early sixteenth century, flogging became the standard punishment for academic shortcomings. Stone thinks the “greater evidence of brutality in the sixteenth-century home and school is a reflection of a harsher reality, not merely of a larger and more revealing body of written records” (164).

Beatings were usually of two forms—with a bundle of birches on the naked buttocks until the blood flowed, or with a ferula, a pear-shaped piece of wood with a hole in it, on hand or mouth, raising a painful blister. Punishment in the schools sometimes reached sadistic proportions, as apparently it did with Dr. Busby of Westminster School and with Dr. Gill of St. Paul's. Floggings were so much a part of university education that by the sixteenth century even the deans and tutors, not merely the college head, had authority to administer physical punishment. So much was flogging a part of education that “the characteristic equipment of the schoolmaster was not so much a book as a rod or a bundle of birch twigs” (Stone, Family 163). Masters regularly beat their servants and apprentices. On one occasion a female apprentice, stripped naked and strung up by her thumbs, was striped with twenty-one lashes (Smith, “Apprentices” 152), and on another, a boy was flogged until he bled, then salted, and finally held naked near a fire (Beattie 62).

In the home, beatings were usually applied by the women—nurses, governesses, or mothers—but also frequently by fathers as well. Robert Burton in the Anatomy of Melancholy complained that parents were often too harsh, too frequently chiding, striking, or whipping their children, causing the children to become cowed, unable to enjoy a single hour free from fear. In Shakespeare's lifetime, the severe chastisement of children was a matter of course, applied freely by parents, schoolmasters, and masters or heads of households. Although in Romeo and Juliet no actual flogging takes place, there is a strong hint that Capulet can scarcely restrain himself from flogging Juliet, when, in his extreme exasperation at her refusal to marry Paris, he cries out:

Hang thee, young baggage! disobedient wretch!
I tell thee what: get thee to church a' Thursday,
Or never after look me in the face.
Speak not, reply not, do not answer me!
My fingers itch.

(III.v.160-164)

The entire cultural setting conditioned Shakespeare and the viewers of his plays to accept severe chastisement as an essential part of life and to expect authority figures, each in his own sphere, to administer discipline and chastisement for correction. Physical chastenings were harsh and frequent. Escalus, Prince of Verona, utters his first words in the play as the authority figure administering discipline: “Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace, / Profaners of this neighbor-stained steel / … / If ever you disturb our streets again / Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace” (I.i.81-82, 96-97). And, just as Capulet is indifferent to the tears and pleadings of his child, Juliet, so is the Prince utterly unresponsive to the tears of his “children” at the banishment of Romeo: “Nor tears nor prayers shall purchase out abuses; / Therefore use none. … / Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill” (III.i.193-194, 197). The Prince seems willing enough to play the father and to chasten his children/subjects, yet at the end of the play, he takes his own place as a whipped child for not being more consistently a disciplinarian, “for winking at your discords,” and of the family of Verona he declares, “All are punish'd” (V.iii.294-295). Moreover, the Prince also insists that the feuding Capulets and Montagues see the loss of their children as chastisement for continuing the “ancient grudge”: “See what a scourge is laid upon your hate” (V.iii.292).

THE VERONA FEUD: A FAMILY FIGHT

The sixteenth century was one of habitual violence, and “both feuding among kin factions and personal hostility of one individual towards another were … intense” (Stone, Family 94). Formal blood feuds among the aristocracy in England had been virtually eliminated by the thirteenth century, but blood feuds continued unabated in Italy and Germany and were endemic among Scottish nobility until virtually Shakespeare's own day. “For example, in the year 1478 there were serious feuds going on between the earl of Buchan and the earl of Atholl, between the master of Crawford and the lord of Glamis, and between the lord of Caerlaverock and the lord of Drumlanrick. There was also a lesser feud going on that involved the lords of Cathness, Ross, and Sutherland” (Given 73-74).

Violence, often ending in homicides, in homes and ale houses and frequently in the streets, characterized English life for centuries, through the Elizabethan era.

Although the formal, institutionalized blood feud had ceased to be a feature of English society by the thirteenth century, kinsmen on occasion still exacted revenge for the death of one of their relatives. In the second quarter of the century William of Radwell was hanged in Wiltshire on the accusation of William of Bowden Hill. If the suspicions of the jurors are to be believed, William of Radwell's kin came one night to William of Bowden's house and in retaliation killed both him and his son. … Simon Whetebred and Nicholas de Rede, both from Helmdon in Northhamptonshire, fought over a debt that Nicholas owed Simon. Simon fatally wounded Nicholas with a stick. When Nicholas' wife Isolda tried to raise the hue and cry to have Simon arrested, his sister Matilda enabled him to escape by throttling Isolda.

(Given 44-45)

The hot-blooded rashness of old Capulet and old Montague is as childish as the hot-blooded rashness of Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare found a feud in his source, Arthur Brooke's The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet, but bitterness, suspicion, distrust, lesser feuds, and violence were an ongoing part of English social behavior during Shakespeare's lifetime. Stone recounts the conflict between Oxford, the father of an illegitimate son by Anne Vavasour, and Thomas Knyvett, her patron. These were men important in Elizabeth's court, both having or having had immediate access to the Queen. In the early months of 1582, rumors flew about Oxford's intention to kill Knyvett. They fought a duel in March and both were wounded. One of Oxford's men was killed. The followers of the two powerful figures met in Lambeth Marsh in June, and again some of Oxford's men were wounded. As Knyvett was disembarking on the slippery Blackfriars stairs, someone tried to kill him. In July, in a fresh outbreak, Knyvett slew an Oxford follower. In February of 1583, another Oxford follower died, apparently killed by a Knyvett man. In the next month, Oxford supporters killed Long Tom, a former follower of Oxford who had become a Knyvett man, and so the quarrel continued (Crisis 233).

The remarkably candid records of Simon Forman include many accounts of bitter conflicts, particularly his persecution by doctors. When he saw Shakespeare's plays, Forman kept notes for his own edification, for “practical use.” After viewing Richard II on 30 April 1611, Forman made this note for future reference, apparently about a passage no longer included as a part of the play:

Remember therein how Jack Straw by his overmuch boldness, not being politic or suspecting anything, was suddenly at Smithfield Bar stabbed by Walworth, the mayor of London, and so he and his whole army was overthrown. Therefore, in such a case or the like, never admit any party without a bar between; for a man cannot be too wise, nor keep himself too safe.

(Rowse 14)

Even trivial incidents could easily be turned into real battles between two families and their respective friends:

William of Bucknell, his brother Geoffrey, and William Swete took part in a penitential procession in Kent. As they passed the house of Richard of Brennesham, John Ruckling, one of their companions, shot an arrow at Richard's dog. Richard and his brother immediately rushed out of the house. They and some of their neighbors pursued the penitents into Littlebourne and wounded them. William of Bucknell died of his wounds three days later, and Richard of Brennesham and his brother promptly fled.

(Given 45-46)

The fanatic pursuit of Catholic recusants in Warwickshire by John Whitgift, Bishop of Worcester—recusants that included Shakespeare's father, John—must have been traumatic enough to seem somewhat like a feud to William, who was an impressionable twelve-year-old when the Grand Commission Ecclesiastical was appointed in 1576 to investigate infractions of the Supremacy Act. “Shakespeare's father had also private enemies, for in Trinity term (June 15-July 4), 1582, he petitioned the court of Queen's Bench for sureties of the peace against Ralph Cawdrey, William Russell, Thomas Logginge, and Robert Young, ‘for fear of death and mutilation of his limbs’” (Eccles 31). The religiosity of the sixteenth century did not diminish the sickening violence nor exclude the persistence of feuding attitudes, even when no blood was actually shed. According to Stone, John Gilpin discovered that many parishioners in the border area of Northumberland refused to enter a church where members of a family with whom they were feuding entered. Separately, they would listen to his preaching, but they would not worship together (Family 94).

The ferocious intensity of the feud impinging upon the young lovers in Romeo and Juliet does not come from Arthur Brooke's boring poem but from the persistent, pernicious freshness with which such enmities continued to afflict English life in Shakespeare's own day. The feud between the house of Montague and that of Capulet, in the conclusion of the play, turns out to be a family fight, somewhat like that of Cain and Abel, hence an “ancient grudge” and “ancient quarrel,” for when they have been chastened, Capulet cries out, “O brother Montague, give me thy hand” (V.iii.296).

DISTANCE AND DEFERENCE IN PARENT/CHILD RELATIONSHIPS

The parents of Romeo and Juliet, like most other parents in Shakespeare's works, display an astounding ignorance of their children as persons, reflecting the lack of in-depth communication between parents and children characteristic of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Both families show some affection for their children, yet both sets of parents reveal an utter inability to communicate with their respective children. Montague remarks to Benvolio about Romeo's solitary behavior. When Benvolio asks, “do you know the cause?” Montague replies, “I neither know it, nor can learn of him,” and when Benvolio pursues further, “Have you importun'd him by any means?” Montague confesses complete failure, “Both by myself and many other friends” (I.i.143-146).

One might dismiss that single incident as being unique, the result of Romeo's infatuation with Rosaline—until the Capulets' quarrel with Juliet. There it is clear that parents try to talk to their children but not with them. Then, if one but recalls Baptista's ignorance of Bianca and Kate, Shylock's of Jessica, Brabantio's of Desdemona, and Lear's of all his daughters, to name only the most glaring examples, one sees a recurring pattern of a profound problem persisting throughout Shakespeare's many troubled families. Once more, the best understanding of the problem derives from the culture at large, from an examination of parent/child relationships. There one sees that distance and deference are the key words—distance, both physical and psychological, of parents from children and deference of children towards parents.

Children were physically separated from their parents when they were placed, often at early infancy, with a wet-nurse. Most frequently, the wet-nurse was not like Juliet's nurse, a live-in, but rather one who took the baby into her own home. The usual period of separation was about eighteen months, but Sir Robert Sibbald seems almost to boast that he nursed until he was more than two years old and was able to run up and down the streets, apparently having an indulgent country woman as his wet-nurse (Stone, Family 430). Another period of separation came at about the seventh year of the child:

“The want of affection in the English is strongly manifested toward their children,” wrote an Italian observer at the beginning of the sixteenth century, “for having kept them at home till they arrive at the age of seven or nine years at the utmost, they put them out, both males and females, to hard service in the houses of other people, binding them generally for another seven or nine years. And these are called apprentices, and during that time they perform all the most menial offices; and few are born who are exempted from this fate, for everyone, however rich he may be, sends away his children to the houses of others, whilst he in return, receives those of strangers into his own. And on inquiring their reason for this severity, they answered that they did it in order that their children might have better manners. But I, for my part, believe they do it because they like to enjoy all their comforts themselves, and that they are better served by strangers than they would be by their own children.”

(Pinchbeck and Hewitt 1:25)

Once this education period ended, the child was about ready to enter life on its own, and if the family were wealthy, perhaps to marry. If not, the child first might have to earn his or her own marriage portion.

The system of child-rearing itself caused extended periods of physical separation of parents from their children, but there was a deliberate psychological distance as well. Parents were warned by religious leaders against “being too fond of your children and too familiar with them at sometimes at least, and not keeping constantly your due distance: such fondness and familiarity breed contempt and irreverency in children” (Cobbett 219-220). Although Lawrence Stone observes that the psychological distance of parents from children was also a defense mechanism in an age of extremely high infant mortality, and that unconscious defense was no doubt present, the conscious reason parents insisted on psychological distance was to avoid “cockering” them, overly indulging them, and to bring them up in the discipline and instruction in the Lord exhorted by Paul in Ephesians 6:4 and by nearly all preachers and religious teachers. Deliberate psychological distancing resulted in a shocking lack of intimacy between parent and child. Richard Helgerson comments on the contents of a letter from Sir Henry Sidney to his twelve-year-old son, Philip: “One cannot help being struck by the impersonality of these precepts. We take up the letter expecting to penetrate the intimacies of sixteenth-century family life and find that there is no intimacy to be penetrated” (17).

It was essential that children be obedient and display due reverence toward their parents at all times; therefore, profound deference was expected of children, even after they had become adults. Juliet, appropriately deferential, addresses her mother with “Madam, I am here, what is your will?” (I.iii.5), and again, “Madam, I am not well” (III.v.68). Cobbett, and many other religious teachers, insisted that children must demonstrate their honor for their parents by actions of great respect—going to meet their parents when they approach, bowing to them, always speaking reverently to them, confessing faults and showing shame when rebuked by them, confessing unworthiness when corrected by them, never sitting in the presence of parents, or talking unless invited to speak, much less laughing, in their parents' presence, and certainly, therefore, never interrupting them when their parents were speaking. Many adult children, like Elizabeth Tanfield, Lady Falkland, knelt continuously when speaking to parents, even if the conversation continued for an hour or more, regardless of pain to legs (Pinchbeck and Hewitt 19).

Even though the Montagues cannot communicate with Romeo, worse devastation results from the Capulets' utter ignorance of Juliet as a person; they neither know her nor understand her, and she finds herself powerless to communicate with them. She tries to get the ear of her parents. Kneeling before her father, she pleads, “Good father, I beseech you on my knees, / Hear me with patience but to speak a word” (III.v.158-159). Capulet is implacable. She turns desperately to her mother, “O sweet my mother, cast me not away!” but her mother will not communicate: “Talk not to me, for I'll not speak a word” (III.v.198, 202). Their ignorance of their daughter and their inability to communicate with her lead to such a rupture of relationships that their emotional distance allows them to reject her totally: “Graze where you will,” threatens Capulet, shaking with rage, “you shall not house with me … hang, beg, starve, die in the streets, / For, by my soul, I'll ne'er acknowledge thee, / Nor what is mine shall never do thee good,” and Lady Capulet, with a cold finality that is even more frightening, announces flatly, “Do as thou wilt, for I have done with thee” (III.v.188, 192-194, 203).

PARENTAL CONSENT A REQUISITE FOR MARRIAGE

The central family conflict in Romeo and Juliet is rebellion, or, to use an only slightly milder term, disobedience. Both children knowingly rebel against the will of their parents, constantly conscious as they are of the bitter feud between the two families, but in the case of Juliet, it is a matter of direct rebellion against the authority of her father, who had made known his will for her to marry Paris. The play thus focuses on a growing cultural conflict between the traditional family-arrranged marriage and individual choice. Lawrence Stone traces four stages in the gradual shifts of attitude towards marriage: (1) marriages entirely arranged by the parents with little or no involvement of the children; (2) marriages arranged by parents, but with the children able to veto; (3) marriage choices made by the children but with parents having the power of veto; and (4) most recently, in this century, children making their own choices with little or no parental involvement, although some indirect parental influence often attempted (Crisis 670).

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the gradual trend was from stage one to stage two, a trend that is evident within this very play, for in the initial discussion with Paris, Capulet makes it clear that Juliet herself is to have a say: “But woo her, gentle Paris, get her heart, / My will to her consent is but a part; / And she agreed, within her scope of choice / Lies my consent and fair according voice” (I.ii.16-19). Moreover, when Lady Capulet first approaches the subject of marriage with Juliet, she does so to encourage Juliet to examine Paris at the upcoming feast as a prospective husband. She cannot wait; soon after announcing, “The valiant Paris seeks you for his love,” she asks, “What say you? can you love the gentleman?” and urges Juliet to “Examine every married lineament, / And see how one another lends content; / And what obscur'd in this fair volume lies / Find written in the margent of his eyes” (I.iii.74, 79, 83-86). It is not surprising, therefore, that Juliet expects to have some say in her marriage choice: “I wonder at this haste, that I must wed / Ere he that should be husband comes to woo” (III.v.118-119). Juliet has been denied any input whatsoever, not that she wanted any in the Paris arrangements, except the right of veto.

Even though she had earlier been allowed to think she was to have some voice in her marriage choice, Juliet learns to her shocked dismay that old modes of thought are not easily altered. She is allowed no part in the decision. The somewhat plaintive but matter-of-fact memoirs of Anne, Lady Halkett, illustrate how jealously parents guarded marriage choices for their children. Anne was born in 1623, the year her father died, and, until she was twenty-one years old, she relates:

I may truly say all my converse was so innocent that my own heart cannot challenge me with any immodesty, either in thought or behavior, or an act of disobedience to my mother, to whom I was so observant that as long as she lived [her mother died in 1647] I do not remember that I made a visit to the nearest neighbor or went any where without her liberty.

(Memoirs 11)

The brother of a friend and son of “Lord H.” of France, to her own surprise, fell in love with Anne and, before she knew what was happening, spoke to her of marriage, something her mother had strictly forbidden. Anne found his passion violent, but she thought it would not last long, especially if not resisted (“a seeming complaisance might lessen it”), and so she promised him that she would not marry anyone until he married, a promise she found easy to make because she was not at that time inclined to marry anyone.

She was mistaken; his passion increased, and he urged that they marry secretly. She firmly resisted his overtures and

told him he need never expect I would marry him without his father's and my mother's consent. If that could be obtained, I should willingly give him the satisfaction he desired, but without that I could not expect God's blessing neither upon him nor me, and I would do nothing that was so certain a way to bring ruin upon us both.

(14)

When the parents were approached through a third party, unsurprisingly, they both objected, most particularly Anne's mother, even though the marriage would have been advantageous to Anne. The memoirs explain that Anne understood her mother's reasoning. It seemed dishonorable to allow Anne to win the affections of the son to her own advantage. Lord H. needed a marriage arrangement for this son that would bring in a considerable marriage portion, far more than Anne's mother could manage. The more it seemed that Anne might be manipulating the affections of the young man, the more strenuously the mother objected, and the more angry she became with Anne, even though Anne was wholly innocent of any wrongdoing.

The young man persisted, making it necessary for Lord H. to leave, taking his son with him. Now the mother was so angry with Anne that nothing could pacify her wrath. “After she had called for me and said as many bitter things as passion could dictate …, she discharged me to see him and did solemnly vow that if she should hear I did see Mr. H. she would turn me out of her doors and never own me again” (15, emphasis added). Obviously, Anne's mother, like old Capulet, reached the ultimate threat of disowning the child very quickly. Although Anne's lover persuaded his father to convince Anne's mother to allow a final farewell visit, once the mother thought they had returned to France, she upbraided Anne for causing all to think that Lord H. had been forced to whisk away his son to save him from Anne. In actual fact, the lover escaped his father's guard and once more returned secretly to Anne's home, insisting upon seeing her again. Perplexed beyond measure what to do, that night as she was passing through her brother's bedroom in order to reach her own, she laid her hand upon her eyes as was her custom when passing through his room while he was in bed, and suddenly she realized the answer to her dilemma: “If I blindfolded my eyes that would secure me from seeing him, and so I did not transgress against my mother” (18, emphasis added). Thus, Anne was faithfully obedient to the very letter of her mother's law, and, anyway, was the wholly innocent party in this painful affair, but she nevertheless was not spared her mother's ire. Her mother's anger increased to the extent that for fourteen months she refused her parental blessing and never spoke to Anne without additional words of reproach, “and one day said with much bitterness she did hate to see me” (20).

Against such deeply entrenched attitudes about the sanctity of total parental control over marriage arrangements, Juliet could not hope to prevail. The modern audience is shocked by the immediate violence of Capulet's wrath against Juliet. His anger springs from several sources simultaneously. First, he is as fond of Juliet as Lear is of Cordelia and is equally disbelieving of her response. He is completely surprised and taken aback that she is not elated, “proud,” and full of joyful gratitude, her grief over the death of her cousin Tybalt thus assuaged. Second, he cannot believe his ears that she dare, even momentarily, challenge his authority by so much as hesitation. He is almost as vehement in putting Tybalt in his place when Tybalt fails to give prompt and total compliance to his will to tolerate Romeo's presence at the feast. Capulet puts words in Juliet's mouth, words actually reflecting some of his own earlier concerns for her: “I'll not wed, I cannot love; / I am too young, I pray you pardon me,” and then picking up on his own word, “pardon,” meaning to give freely or thoroughly, he threatens to give her more freedom than she ever dreamed—total freedom, in fact: “Graze where you will, you shall not house with me” (III.v. 185-186, 188). The absolute authority of fathers was to be entirely unchallenged, even when they were wrong or when the child had greater wisdom. John Stockwood, in 1589, makes that abundantly clear in his pamphlet with the daunting title, A Bartholomew Fairing for Parentes … shewing that children are not to marie without the consent of their parentes, in whose power and choice it lieth to provide wives and husbondes for their sonnes and daughters. He emphatically asserts:

The question here is not, what children in regard either of age or wit are able for to do but what God hath thought meet & expedient. … For there are many children found sometimes far to exceed their fathers in wit and wisdom, yea in all other gifts both of mind & body, yet is this not good reason that they should take upon them their father's authority.”

(82)

To rebel against the father's authority in the matter of marriage, regardless of the age or wisdom of the child is rebellion against God as well. Third, Juliet's father is angry because he has already given his word to Paris, and he simply will “not be forsworn” (III.v.195). It is a matter of honor and integrity, similar to that of the mother of Anne, Lady Halkett. Finally, there is a fourth reason for Capulet's outrage toward Juliet, outrage he declares that

makes me mad!
Day, night, work, play,
Alone, in company, still my care hath been
To have her match'd; and having now provided
A gentleman of noble parentage,
Of fair demesnes, youthful and nobly [lien'd],
Stuff'd, as they say, with honorable parts,
Proportion'd as one thought would wish a man.

(III.v.176-182)

His outrage continues. Part of it represents his disgust with Juliet's ingratitude for all his concerned efforts on her behalf. Yet embedded in it, too, is the primary reason for arranging marriages in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: for the improvement of status (“of noble parentage”) and for material gain (“of fair demesnes”).

The crassness with which people of Shakespeare's time considered children chattels and arranged marriages as a matter of buying and selling is virtually beyond belief today. Nevertheless, that view of children had the full weight of religion behind it. John Stockwood stresses that as a major reason why children must not marry without their parents' consent: “The children are worthily to be reckoned among the good and substance of their fathers, and that by a more especial right than anything else, the which belongeth unto their possession,” and children simply must not arrange their own marriages “for it standeth with great reason, that the owner dispose of the goods, and not contrariwise the goods of the owner, which were in deed a thing very absurd and contrary to all reason” (21-22).

Nowadays, the sympathy of the audience is entirely with Romeo and Juliet, but “in Tudor England the prevailing conception of marriage was practical rather than romantic, and … the insistence on the duty of the children to obey their parents contributed to the conception” (Pinchbeck and Hewitt 1:48). When John Stockwood wrote A Bartholomew Fairing in 1589, he believed the plague England had just experienced was the judgment of God upon England because so many children had disobediently married without their parents' consent. The powerfully appealing love affair and marriage of Romeo and Juliet was so effectively portrayed by Shakespeare as, perhaps, to help change societal attitudes in later years, but at the time the Tudor audience would have viewed their actions quite ambivalently. The disobedience of children, in their minds, deserved punishment.

CONTRASTED RASH REBELLIONS AND THEIR PUNISHMENTS

The rebellion or disobedience of children deserves punishment, even when they are adults, for a part of the ambivalent response to Romeo and Juliet results from the fact that their disobedience is young and virtually innocent compared to the “ancient grudge” and “cank'red hate” of their parents, outbreaks of enmity continued in utter disobedience to and rebellion against their “father,” the Prince. The antitheses in the play between youth and age, love and hate, eros and thanatos have not gone unnoticed, but the particular contrast between the rash rebellion of the parents in continuing the feud and the rash rebellion of the children in marrying without parental consent needs further treatment.

So much stress is laid upon the ancient nature of the quarrel as to make it seem almost primordial. It is in relation to the feud that both Montague and Capulet are described as being “old,” and, since friends as well as relatives are drawn into feuds, that the feud has continued from virtual antiquity is underscored by the fact that “Verona's ancient citizens” have had to “Cast by their grave beseeming ornaments / To wield old partisans, in hands as old” (I.i.92-93, emphasis added). The constant ringing of the word “old” adds a hoary aura to their hate, as though their bitter enmity springs from and perpetuates the malignant malice theologically termed original sin, the malice that sadly characterizes many human relationships in all ages, not merely the age of Shakespeare.

The original cause of the feud is unknown, perhaps very slight if “bred of an airy word” refers to the initial source rather than to the most recent “three civil brawls.” In the sixteenth century, as Stone observes, people quarreled over “prestige and property,” causing bloodshed over status as surely as over money (Crisis 223). Honor, and its closely related concept of reputation, was a cherished cultural value; the impulsive readiness to repay a real or imaginary injury was thought a sign of spirit, and loyalty to family or friend in a quarrel a moral duty regardless of the worthiness of the cause. Poor diet and ill health produced constant irritability; men and, among the lower classes, women all carried weapons and were ready to the point of eagerness to use them—perhaps as a release from the frustration, tedium, and boredom of their daily lives. Sampson's opening swagger, “we'll not carry coals,” suggests an eagerness to interpret the slightest “airy word” as an insult. The pettiness of the thumb-biting attempt to provoke a quarrel is not in the least beneath the childishness to which even nobility were willing to stoop in Shakespeare's day. The Earl of Lincoln, during a quarrel with a neighbor, placed a load of human waste on the windward side of his neighbor. Henry Howard, later to become the second Vicount Bindon, repeatedly galloped by the Sheriff of Dorset in order to splash him with mud and finally deliberately knocked his hat into the mud puddles (Stone, Crisis 224-225). Childishness in quarrels was not at all uncommon.

Moreover, one should remember that the play opens with an emphasis upon the breaking out of the “ancient grudge” into “new mutiny,” with at least two “civil brawls” occuring prior to the one on the streets of Verona with which the play begins, for “Three civil brawls … By thee, old Capulet, and Montague / Have thrice disturb'd the quiet of our streets” (I.i.89-91). It is also not surprising that Mercutio, “kinsman to the Prince,” is involved in the feud. Stone comments on the feuds, during the reign of Elizabeth, between the Stanhopes and the Markhams, between the Fiennes and the Dymocks, between the Danvers and the Longs, between the Muschampes and the Collingwoods, and between the Mansells and the Heydons. All of these, Stone says, pulled in, through family alliances, many other important people (Crisis 229). Queen Elizabeth tolerated a great deal of violence of that sort and even deliberately manipulated violent factions among the aristocracy in such a fashion that they acted as checks, each upon the other. When some special interest of the state was threatened, however, Elizabeth could act vigorously enough, as she did when the religious loyalty of the Earl of Shrewsbury was called into question (236).

In Romeo and Juliet, the fresh outbreak of the “ancient grudge” is termed “mutiny,” with the Prince as outraged as Capulet was with Juliet when the brawls continue, and the fighting is not immediately halted, even in his own presence. His term for them is “Rebellious subjects,” and his exasperation increases as the conflict continues. Although it is Tybalt who hates the word “peace” as “I hate Hell,” one cannot escape the conclusion that he but reflects the intensity of the hatred of the heads of these two families. The impetuous rashness with which they have at each other on the street, and the cold calculating determination of Lady Capulet to “send one to Mantua” to poison Romeo, even though the Prince has already administered justice, manifest the deep-seated disobedience to the fatherly authority of the Prince. Their continued rebellion deserves a more severe chastisement than the almost incidental disobedience of Romeo and Juliet resulting from their love for each other. Moreover, if the bypassing of parental consent by the young people were rebellion against God, as Shakespeare's audience would have felt, how much more would an audience that heard in church nearly every Sunday the Homily on Obedience of 1547 view the continued rebellion of the two families against the authority of the Prince as rebellion also against God. “The power of kings in their realms was likened unto God in the universe; of corporal heads over the other limbs of the human body; and of fathers over families. … Order and obedience were indivisible. And just as order was the principle by which God's will was manifest, so were disobedience and rebellion the manifestation of disorder and defiance of God's will” (Ashton 35-36).

Just as David's rebellion against God in the matter of adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband Uriah was mirrored in the rebellion of Absalom against both David and God, so was the rebellion of Romeo and Juliet but a dim reflection of the more culpable mutiny of the parents. The exquisite beauty of the love of Romeo and Juliet for each other, in sharp contrast to the “cank'red hate” of their parents, practically purifies their actions, especially since they receive the blessing of Friar Lawrence. The modern audience, however, imbued with the myth that romantic love is self-justifying, feels that contrast more keenly than one in Shakespeare's time would have done. Stone quotes Bacon about the mischief done by passionate love acting sometimes like a Siren and sometimes like a Fury. Since passionate love is a human phenomenon, as Stone says, “like influenza,” Bacon warned that if one catches it, he should at the least keep that passion separated from the serious business of life. Stone also quotes the brother of Dorothy Osborne who says in effect that since passions cause more trouble than they provide satisfactions, one should minimize them if he wishes to be happy (Crisis 594). Even in this play, Juliet expresses distrust of “this contract,” representing their impetuous passionate love: “It is too rash, too unadvis'd, too sudden, / Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be / Ere one can say it lightens” (II.ii.118-120). Yet, surely in any culture of any age, the play powerfully persuades one of the reality of their love, particularly in contrast to the artificiality of the infatuation Romeo formerly felt for Rosaline, another contrast of old and young, “old desire” versus “young affection.”

Against the black enmity of their parents, their love, like Juliet herself “hangs upon the cheek of night / As a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear—/ Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!” (I.v.45-47). Their love is born in the festering charnel house of familial disobedience and ends literally in a tomb, surrounded by the bones of “buried ancestors” and Tybalt “fest'ring in his shroud.” The “ancient grudge” comes to an end through the chastening of the forgivable rash disobedience of the young, for nothing less than their deaths could be sufficient chastening for the rash disobedience of the old, deaths so beautifully bright that they make “This vault a feasting presence full of light” (V.iii.86).

CONCLUSION

Like the slaughter of the innocents to assuage the rage of Herod, resulting in “mourning, and weeping, and great lamentation: Rachel weeping for her children” (Matthew 2:18, Geneva Bible), so Romeo and Juliet, albeit chastened for their own disobedience, become sacrificial lambs, taking away the deep-rooted and malignant hate of their parents, the very instruments through which the parents themselves are chastened—“Poor sacrifices of our enmity!” (V.ii.304). Shakespeare's plays are filled with troubled families about all of whom it may be said, “Our house is hell,” but in Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare uses the family as a metaphor to demonstrate how young and old alike are disobedient children requiring the correction of chastisement.

PRINCE:
Where be these enemies? Capulet! Montague!
See what a scourge is laid upon your hate,
That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love.
And I for winking at your discords too
Have lost a brace of kinsmen. All are punish'd.
CAPULET:
O brother Montague, give me thy hand.

(V.iii.291-296)

Works Cited

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Helgerson, Richard. The Elizabethan Prodigals. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.

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Pinchbeck, Ivy, and Margaret Hewitt. Children in English Society. 2 vols. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969.

Rowse, A. L. Sex and Society in Shakespeare's Age: Simon Forman the Astrologer. New York: Charles Scribner's, 1974.

Stockwood, John. A Bartholomew Fairing for Parentes. … London, 1589.

Stone, Lawrence. The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558-1641. Oxford: Clarendon, 1965.

———. Family and Fortune: Studies in Aristocratic Finance in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Oxford: Clarendon, 1973.