The play takes place over a time span of four days. Within these few days, Juliet is thrust into adulthood quickly—where she must deal with issues of life such as, romance, passion, loss, and even death. During the play she is courted by a potential husband named Count Paris, strongly falls romantically in love with Romeo who is the only son of her family's enemy, marries Romeo secretly, experiences the death of her first cousin Tybalt, has one brief passionate, romantic night with her new husband before he is forced to leave the city, is threatened by her father and nearly disowned by both of her parents for refusing to marry the man they have chosen for her, she is let down emotionally by the nurse who raised her from infancy, and spends nearly two days drugged to unconsciousness. When Romeo found out he thought she was dead and drank poison to meet her in the after life.

Shakespeare's Juliet is a headstrong and intelligent character in spite of her young age, though she often seems timid to the audience because of her young age. She is considered by many to be the true hero of the play, acting as a sounding board and a balance against the impulsive Romeo. It is Juliet who sets the boundaries of behaviour in her relationship with Romeo: she allows him to kiss her, she pledges her commitment before him, and it is she who suggests their marriage. Juliet's forgiveness of Romeo after he kills Tybalt indicates her mature nature in contrast to his passionate impulsiveness. Furthermore, Juliet lies and clandestinely subverts her family's wishes, a truly rebellious action against traditional Italian society. These actions and the choices they require establish Juliet as a far more complex character than her family, or even Romeo, appreciate.

Character history

Juliet's wealthy family lived in Verona, headed by old Capulet and his wife. She was their only child and was thought of as a gift from heaven. Juliet at this point is two weeks away from her fourteenth birthday. As a child, she was cared for by her nurse, who is now her confidant, or Juliet's best companion.

In Juliet's first scene, she demonstrates her obedience and lack of experience in the world, outlining herself as inexperienced and in many ways dependent on her parents and nurse. She does not even give marriage a second thought but she does want to do what her mother asks. It is high time that Juliet go the route Lady Capulet went in her youth, and be married to a rich and powerful gentleman like her father. The Count Paris is a bit of a bystander in the play, however, unwittingly mixed up in the drama between the families. The to-be couple only ever met once in the Friar Lawrence's cell, which was very brief. His interest in her is primarily based on her social standing and her family's vast wealth, in contrast to her youthful beauty. He politely and nobly asks Capulet for her hand, and apparently would like her to begin bearing his children as soon as physically possible: "Younger than she are happy mothers made" (1.2.12). Juliet, on the other hand, has no interest in becoming a wife and the mother of Paris's children: "(Marriage) is an honor that I dream not of" (1.3.68). Even her father at first considers her too young to settle down. This may be a reflection on his feelings about his own wife, who might have been happier waiting a few years before marrying him. He tells Paris to let Juliet grow up for a few more years before planning marriage, but he pompously disagrees (1.2.10–11). Of course, Juliet's mind on the matter changes within a few minutes of meeting Romeo, but when Paris is mentioned to her by her mother in act three she reverts back to an immature, whining, almost infantile state.

Romeo also seems to achieve depth through his intense love with Juliet. When compared to the pining and frustration he exhibited during his crush on Rosaline, his behaviour toward Juliet and her family and his attitude in general both show a level of great maturity. The feud that one day had seemed all-encompassing now makes no sense, and he abandons it. Much of Romeo's dialogue with Juliet is an intricate pattern of words. Their rhyming couplets sometimes come together to create a poem. This symbolises their union, and shows that Juliet can easily match Romeo in wordplay.

It is not clear exactly why Romeo and Juliet love each other, beyond immediate physical attraction. They were married not 24 hours after their first meeting. Fate plays a constant role in the story. Their love is "death-marked" (1.1.9), the lovers are "star-crossed" (1.1.6), and Romeo feels he is being led by the stars as a ship is steered by its pilot. The idea may be that the heirs to these two families were fated to end up together to end the feud, and their deaths may or may not have been part of that fate. The play may be interpreted differently according to the whim of the reader or viewer. The series of disastrous events that leads to their deaths may have been just a part of the destiny, or it may have been what shattered the fate and made the story a true tragedy. Either way, peace comes to the families.

One aspect of the story which now seems problematic is Juliet's age. As the story occurs, Juliet is approaching her fourteenth birthday. She was born on "Lammas Eve at night" (1 August), so Juliet's birthday is 31 July (1.3.19). Her birthday is "a fortnight hence", putting the action of the play in mid-July (1.3.17). Her father states that she "hath not seen the change of fourteen years" (1.2.9). In many cultures and time periods, women did and do marry and bear children at an early age. Romeo and Juliet is a play about Italian families. Lady Capulet had given birth to her first child by the time she had reached Juliet's age: "By my count, I was your mother much upon these years that you are now a maid." (1.3.74–75).

Even Capulet tries to encourage Paris to wait a little longer before even thinking of marrying his daughter, feeling that she is still too young; "She hath not seen the change of fourteen years, Let two more summers wither in their pride, Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride". However, in the English poem the story is based from (Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke) Juliet is approaching her sixteenth birthday and Romeo is the same age whereas in the Bandello novella she is nearly eighteen with Romeo about twenty. The common English people of that age were very rarely in their teens when they married and even among the nobility and gentry of the age, brides thirteen years of age were rare, at about one in one thousand brides; in that era, the vast majority of English brides were at least nineteen years of age when they first married, most commonly at about 23 years, and most English noblewomen were at least sixteen when they married. That the parts of young women were played by pre-adolescent boys in Shakespeare's day also cannot be overlooked and it is possible that Shakespeare had the physique of a young boy in mind during composition, in addition to the fact that Romeo and Juliet are of wealthy families and would be more likely to marry earlier than commoners. At the time, English noblewomen married on average at 19–21 years (compared to 24–26 years for English noblemen) while the average marriage age in England was 25–26 years for women and 27–28 for men; Sir Thomas More wrote in his Utopia that, in Utopia, women must be at least 18 years of age when they marry and men at least 22 years.

The common belief in Elizabethan England was that motherhood before 16 was dangerous; popular manuals of health, as well as observations of married life, led Elizabethans to believe that early marriage and its consummation permanently damaged a young woman's health, impaired a young man's physical and mental development, and produced sickly or stunted children. Therefore, 18 came to be considered the earliest reasonable age for motherhood and 20 and 30 the ideal ages for women and men, respectively, to marry. Shakespeare might also have reduced Juliet's age from sixteen to fourteen to demonstrate the dangers of marriage at too young of an age; that Shakespeare himself married Anne Hathaway when he was just eighteen might hold some significance.

Casa di Giulietta

In Verona, an early 14th-century house at Via Cappello no. 23, claiming to be the Capulets' has been turned into a tourist attraction but it is mostly empty. The real second name was in Italian Cappelletti, a noble family, and not Capuleti. Cappelletti were in the past members of the light cavalry of the Republic of Venice. They fought for it since the 13th century and they were originally from Dalmatia and Albania. It features the balcony, and in the small courtyard, a bronze statue of Juliet. It is one of the most visited sites in the town. The metal of its chest is worn bare due to a legend that if a person strokes the right breast of the statue, that person will have good fortune and luck in love.

Many people write their names and the names of their beloved ones on the walls of the entrance, known as Juliet's wall. Many believe that writing on that place will make their love everlasting. After a restoration and cleaning of the building, it was intended that further writing should be on replaceable panels^[9] or white sheets^[10] placed outside the wall.

It is also a tradition to put small love letters on the walls (which is done by the thousands each year), which are regularly taken down by employees to keep the courtyard clean.^[11]

Another tradition that occurs in Juliet's courtyard is writing your name and that of your loved one on a lock and attaching it to a large ornamental gate in the back left. The gate is overwhelmed with locks that hold hope for lasting love. This tradition is seen throughout Europe on bridges and gates all over cities.

Club di Giulietta

Since the 1930s, letters addressed to Juliet keep arriving in Verona. As of 2010, more than 5,000 letters are received annually, three-quarters of which are from women. The largest single group of senders are American teenagers.^[12] The letters are read and replied to by local volunteers, organised since the 1980s in the Club di Giulietta (Juliet Club), which is financed by the City of Verona.^[12] The club has been the subject of a book by Lise and Ceil Friedman and is the setting for a 2008 book by Suzanne Harper and a 2010 USA movie, Letters to Juliet.