SOURCE: "Ideology and Feud in Romeo and Juliet," in Shakespeare Survey: An Annual Survey of Shakespeare Studies and Production, Vol. 49, 1996, pp. 87-96.

In the following essay, Snyder contends that the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets in Romeo and Juliet is a metaphor for ideology, arguing that social "norms themselves bring about the tragedy" of the play.

Romeo and Juliet are very young. They are young to be married, and also young to be protagonists in a tragedy. Shakespeare made a special point of Juliet's extreme youth, first subtracting two years from the already tender age of Arthur Brooke's heroine (instead of sixteen, just under fourteen), and then having the characters disagree more than once over whether she is old enough to marry.¹ Romeo, presumably somewhat older than Juliet, is nevertheless not yet grown up: still in the family home, fussed over by his parents, free to...