Juliet - Juliet's Age

Juliet's Age

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" (August 1), so Juliet's birthday is July 31 (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). Shakespeare not only explicitly had the characters state Juliet's age of between 13 and 14, but also subtly emphasized her age through numeric symbolism. The name "Juliet Capulet" has exactly 13 letters in it, and she is the 13th character to appear on stage. Romeo also calls her name 14 times in the play. This suggests that he was putting importance on Juliet's age and youth to emphasize her immaturity.

In the English poem the story is based from (Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke) Juliet is approaching her fourteenth birthday. 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". 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 22 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.