As the story occurs, Juliet is approaching her fourteenth birthday. She was born on "Lammas Eve at night" (1 August), so Juliet's birthday is 31 July (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 married and had children at a young age. 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).
Even Capulet tries to encourage Count Paris, a wealthy suitor, 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". However, in the English poem the story is based on (Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke)[1] Juliet is approaching her sixteenth birthday and Romeo is the same age whereas in the Bandello novella she is nearly eighteen with Romeo about twenty.[2] 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 13 years of age were rare, at about one in 1,000 brides; in that era, the vast majority of English brides were at least 19 years of age when they first married, most commonly at about 23 years, and most English noblewomen were at least 16 when they married. That the parts of young women were played by pre-adolescent boys in Shakespeare's day also cannot be overlooked; 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.[3] At the time, English noblewomen married on average at 19–21 years (compared to 24–26 years for English noblemen) while the average marriage age in England was 25–26 years for women and 27–28 for men.[4]
The common belief in Elizabethan England was that motherhood before 16 was dangerous; popular manuals of health, as well as observations of married life, led Elizabethans to believe that early marriage and its consummation permanently damaged a young woman's health, impaired a young man's physical and mental development, and produced sickly or stunted children. Therefore, 18 came to be considered the earliest reasonable age for motherhood and 20 and 30 the ideal ages for women and men, respectively, to marry. Shakespeare might also have reduced Juliet's age from 16 to 13 to demonstrate the dangers of marriage at too young an age; that Shakespeare himself married Anne Hathaway when he was 18 might hold some significance.[2]
Juliet's purported balcony, in Verona. Beneath it, on the walls, there are love letters.
Love letter wall, Verona
Love locket wall beneath the balcony, Verona
was the first woman to play Juliet professionally. Previous actors had all been males.[11]
was one of the most well-known Juliets in history, most famously in the 1935 London production directed by John Gielgud, in which Gielgud and Laurence Olivier alternated the roles of Romeo and Mercutio.
In the 2019 West End musical , Juliet is played by actress Miriam-Teak Lee.[13]
& Juliet
portrayed Juliet in the 2022 Broadway version of "& Juliet".[14]
Lorna Courtney
born to a Ghanaian father and Nigerian mother,[15] was cast to portray Juliet in a 2024 West End production, alongside Tom Holland as Romeo.[16]
Francesca Amewudah-Rivers
, 2019 musical
& Juliet
Bevington, David, Ed. Romeo and Juliet, The Bantam Shakespeare (New York, 1988)
Levenson, Jill L., Ed. Romeo and Juliet, The Oxford Shakespeare (Oxford, 2000)
"Juliet's Taming of Romeo" Carolyn E. Brown; SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500–1900, Vol. 36, 1996
"A Psychological Profile of Shakespeare's Juliet: Or Was It Merely Hormones?" Nancy Compton Warmbrod The English Journal, Vol. 69, No. 9 (Dec. 1980), p. 29
Media related to Juliet at Wikimedia Commons