What Is 'Romeo and Juliet' Actually About?

 Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

This Shakespeare play is usually understood by modern readers to be a great 'love' story: two people who adore each other yet were unjustly kept apart due to the stupidity of their warring families.

However it is unlikely that this was Shakespeare's intended meaning. Looked at through the lens of a Christian understanding of love, Romeo's behaviour in particular is less a great example of romance, and more a warning tale of emotion-led stupidity.

This is the conclusion of Joseph Pearce, visiting Professor of Literature at Ave Maria University, in his introduction of the Ignatius Critical Edition of the play. "What Romeo calls 'love' is not really love at all – at least it is not love in the deeper and deepest sense of the word," he says of Romeo's desire for Rosaline in the first scene.

Romeo's fickle transfer of his 'love' for Rosaline to Juliet is one example of its shallow depth. "Romeo and Juliet do not know each other," continues Pearce. "They do not even know each other's names. Romeo declares his 'love' before he has even spoken a single word to his beloved. How can such love be anything but superficial, a bewitchment of the eye in response to great physical beauty? This, at any rate, seems to be the question that Shakespeare ... is asking."

Pearce has just begun a more accessible series of articles on Shakespeare, starting with Romeo and Juliet, in the online magazine Aleteia.

Therefore the play is a great vehicle to discuss one of the most important questions of life: what is love?