Important points in Romeo and Juliet

1. Important points in Romeo and Juliet • Fuel between 2 families : Montague and Capulet • Young lovers : Romeo and Juliet • Important minor character : The Nurse • Inspiration of the love story : Pyramus &Thisbe • Duelling

2. Why Do the Capulets and Montagues Fight? • The conflict seems very much a petty thing. Neither the Montague or Capulet families REALLY understand the feud. • The characters in the story were born long after the feud began, and they simply continue the fighting because it is all they have ever known. There is conflict of interest. • Each family wants more power than the other, they just lack the ability to create that power. They use words, swords and people as weapons. There's conflicting pain between the families. • Each family has to suffer monumental losses like death of loved ones. It results in this vengeful retaliation. Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Name_some_conflicts_between_Capulet_and_Montague#ixzz1DLKx7Ikz

3. Marriage in the Renaissance England • The most startling thing about Romeo and Juliet for a modern audience is the extreme youth--and extreme passion--of the young lovers. • They are so obviously attracted to each other that Friar Lawrence will not leave them alone until they are married. Although sex before marriage was countenanced in some circumstances, marriage was the only honourable way the two could consummate their love. • Perhaps it is no accident that Romeo and Juliet is one of Shakespeare's most bawdy plays. • But would the audience in Shakespeare's day have reacted in the same way? The average age of marriage in the period was actually higher than today, though in noble households children were sometimes married younger for reasons of the estate. • The audience response to the disobedience of Juliet is harder to guess. Children were expected to obey--but parents were expected to be responsible in their choice too.

4. Marriage in the Renaissance England • One common belief about the Renaissance is that children, especially girls, married young. In some noble houses marriages were indeed contracted at a young age, for reasons of property and family alliance, but in fact the average age of marriage was quite old--in the middle twenties. • Marriage statistics indicate that the mean marriage age for the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras was higher than many people realize. Data taken from birthdates of women and marriage certificates reveals mean marriage ages to have been as follows: • 1566-1619 - 27.0 years • 1647-1719 - 29.6 years • 1719-1779 - 26.8 years • 1770-1837 - 25.1 years

5. The marriage age of men was probably the same or a bit older than that of women. (In 1619, it was about 23 for women, 26 for men.) The age of consent was 12 for a girl, 14 for a boy, but for most children puberty came two or three years later than it does today. • Oddly enough, there seems to be a period in the late sixteenth century when the mean marriage age of women in and around the area of Stratford-on- Avon dropped as low as 21 years: the mean marriage age from 1580 to 1589 was about 20.6 years, and it was in this decade that Shakespeare, at the age of eighteen, married Anne Hathaway. • The reason for late marriage among labourers and the middle class was simple enough: it took a long time for a couple to acquire enough belongings to set up housekeeping, even in a room of their parents' home. • Young love, however romantic, had to be kept in check if the two lovers were to survive in a world where subsistence earnings would not purchase a roof over their heads and put food on the table. • Children of noble birth ran a great risk if they tried to marry without the approval of their parents, since they would be left without resources. Perhaps the caution of young Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing has something to do with the fear of acting without permission: he is careful to make sure that his loved one, Hero, is the sole heir to her father's estate (see 1.1.242-243).

6. Nurses in the Renaissance

7. Wet Nurses • A wet nurse, by definition, is a woman hired to suckle another woman's child (Webster, 1518). • These wet nurses were popular in the fifteenth century. Back in the middle ages there were no orphanages for children, so the municipality would hire these nurses to take the children in and nourish them (Hanawalt, 83). • This 'profession' was a way for women to earn a little money. This was a job often done by serfs and servants. However, the status of the husbands of these nurses may have been higher. They usually held jobs like bakers, stone cutters, and tailors (Hanawalt, 85). • The women hired to be nurses were usually only assigned one child at a time. Rarely were they given more than one child to a nurse (Hanawalt, 86). • The standard payment for the nourishment of a child was 17s 6d a month for those women that chose to breast feed. The women that used some other means of nourishment were paid 12s 6d a month (Hanawalt, 88).

8. More about Wet Nurses • The child or children a woman was assigned varied in age. Records of over 300 nurses indicate that 65% of the women nursed a child under one year old. Twenty-one percent of these women nursed children between the ages of 1 and 3 years. Only 10% were given children between the ages of 3 and 5 years. And the last 4% had children over 5 years old (Hanawalt, 87). • This job often came with emotional attachments. The child and the nurse would often grow fond of or get used to each other. It was not uncommon that the nurse became the child's nanny. In rare cases the nurse would legally adopt the child (Hanawalt, 87). • This job was not a prestigious one held, mostly, by women. Men also appeared on this list of recorded nurses. The men usually nourished the children and looked after them (Hanawalt, 84). Because of the scarce records, not much more on these nurses is known. http://www.millersv.edu/~english/homepage/duncan/medfem/wet.htmlby Christy M. Wincovitch

9. Pyramus and Thisbe • In the Ovidian version, Pyramus and Thisbe is the story of two lovers in the city of Babylon who occupy connected houses/walls, forbidden by their parents to be wed, because of their parents' rivalry. • Through a crack in one of the walls, they whisper their love for each other. They arrange to meet near at Ninus' tomb under a mulberry tree and state their feelings for each other. • Thisbe arrives first, but upon seeing a lioness with a mouth bloody from a recent kill, she flees, leaving behind her veil. The lioness drinks from a nearby fountain, then by chance mutilates the veil Thisbe had left behind. • When Pyramus arrives, he is horrified at the sight of Thisbe's veil, assuming that a fierce beast had killed her. Pyramus kills himself, falling on his sword in proper Roman fashion, and in turn splashing blood on the white mulberry leaves. • Pyramus' blood stains the white mulberry fruits, turning them dark. Thisbe returns, eager to tell Pyramus what had happened to her, but she finds Pyramus' dead body under the shade of the mulberry tree. Thisbe, after a brief period of mourning, stabs herself with the same sword. In the end, the gods listen to Thisbe's lament, and forever change the colour of the mulberry fruits into the stained colour to honour the forbidden love.

10. Duelling • Though officially frowned upon, duels for the sake of honour continued in Shakespeare's lifetime. • His contemporary, Ben Jonson, fought a duel with another actor, Gabriel Spenser, and was found guilty of manslaughter. Jonson, of course, was a mere actor and bricklayer. Members of the nobility would not have been charged. • The close relationship between the art and sport of fencing and duelling is illustrated in Hamlet, where the fencing contest rapidly changes to a duel when Hamlet realizes he has been tricked (see 5.2.304).

11. The Romantic depiction of medieval duels was based on either a pretext of defence of honour, usually accompanied by a trusted representative (who might themselves fight, often in contravention of the duelling conventions), or as a matter of challenge of the champion which developed out of the desire of one party (the challenger) to redress a perceived insult to his sovereign's honour. The goal of the honourable duel was often not so much to kill the opponent as to gain "satisfaction", that is, to restore one's honour by demonstrating a willingness to risk one's life for it.

12. As practised from the 11th to 20th centuries in Western societies, a duel is an engagement in combat between two individuals, with matched weapons in accordance with their combat doctrines

13. duels were not used to determine guilt or innocence, nor were they official procedures. Indeed, from the early 17th century duels were often illegal in Europe, though in most societies where duelling was socially accepted, participants in a fair duel were not prosecuted

14. Shakespeare and the Duel • The formality of the judicial combat--a duel which was to decide which of two combatants was in the right over some issue--is seen in the scene in Richard IIwhen the Marshal and two heralds orchestrate the combat between Henry Bolingbroke and Thomas Mowbray. • Richard's abrupt interruption (1.3.118) is startling, and can be seen as a lapse in chivalric decorum. • In Romeo and Juliet,more spontaneous -- and illegal -- duels are fought by Romeo with Tybalt and Paris (3.1 and 5.3). • On a different level, two of Shakespeare's mature comedies exploit the potential humour in the duel. In Twelfth Night, the disguised Viola is coerced into a duel with an equally reluctant foe, Sir Andrew Aguecheek; • in As You Like It, Touchstone goes into great detail about the ritual of "giving the lie" in its various degrees of provocation, from the Retort Courteous to the Lie Circumstantial and the Lie Direct (but even the Lie Direct could be avoided with an "if"). • http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/society/court%20life/duels.html