Totally an oversimplification, but looking at their actions, it’s clear that they don’t just make choices that aren’t smart, but uncharacteristically foolish. A reader will constantly tell themselves “Well, they’re only thirteen and fifteen years old, so I shouldn’t have my emersion broken when they make stupid decisions”. Speaking as objectively as possible, suspending disbelief shouldn’t be a substitute for characters making defensible choices. This is perfectly noticeably in Act IV, Scene I, where Juliet speaks to the Friar Lawrence on how she can escape her problem with Romeo’s …show more content…
Maybe the characters are supposed to be unintelligent or act unconventionally in a sort of sad, romantic comedy sort of way. The characters are already unrealistically young, so one could argue that they’re made entirely as a juxtaposition towards the normally very mature genre of these type of more tragic dramas. The problem with this idea is that the story isn’t supposed to have any kind of juxtaposition. In 1597, the time of the drama’s publication, people actually got married at ages thirteen and fifteen, so the events of the story actually aren’t that farfetched. Quite the contrary, one could argue that the play is bad in premise, and for those exact reasons. In the most objective way, the story simply hasn’t aged well at all. Today, if someone were to set up the play for a professional performance, it wouldn’t make any sense to see professional actors acting so uncharacteristically foolish that it wouldn’t make any sense. In fact, I’m not alone in this way of thinking. Alyssa Rosenberg in “Romeo and Juliet Is a Terrible Play, and David Leveaux Can't Change That” writes that “Romeo's age isn't specified in the play, but the quickness with which he throws over a former flame for Juliet doesn’t suggest a particularly mature man. Maybe this works on the page, when we’re not forced to watch actors and actresses who are clearly in their 20s and 30s behave like early teenagers. But the effect is