Context & Elizabethan Verona
Why Context Matters for Romeo and Juliet
In the Edexcel exam, AO3 requires you to show understanding of the social, historical and cultural context of the play. For Romeo and Juliet, this means understanding Elizabethan attitudes to love, marriage, family honour, gender roles and religion. You cannot simply bolt context on as a separate paragraph — it must be woven into your analysis of language, structure and form.
Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet around 1594–1596, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. The play is set in Verona, Italy, but the values it explores — obedience, honour, patriarchal authority — reflect Elizabethan England as much as Renaissance Italy. Understanding these values helps you explain why the characters behave as they do and why the tragedy feels inevitable.
Elizabethan marriages among the upper classes were typically arranged by fathers to secure wealth, land or political alliances. Love was not expected — it was considered a bonus. Romeo and Juliet’s secret marriage defies this entire social system.
Elizabethan Love: Petrarchan Conventions
Shakespeare’s audience would have been familiar with Petrarchan love, a poetic tradition named after the fourteenth-century Italian poet Francesco Petrarch. In Petrarchan poetry, the male lover worships an idealised, unattainable woman from a distance. He suffers dramatically — unable to eat, sleep, or function — while the woman remains cold and distant. This love is performative and self-indulgent rather than genuine.
Romeo begins the play as a classic Petrarchan lover. He is infatuated with Rosaline, a woman who barely appears on stage. He speaks in elaborate oxymorons: “O brawling love, O loving hate” and “heavy lightness, serious vanity.” These contradictions reveal that Romeo is performing the role of a lover rather than genuinely feeling love. Mercutio mocks this: he sees Romeo’s Petrarchan posturing as ridiculous and superficial.
When Romeo first sees Juliet at the Capulet ball (Act 1, Scene 5), his language transforms. Instead of the stale oxymorons he uses for Rosaline, he speaks with genuine wonder: “O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright! / It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night / As a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear.” The metaphor of light against darkness suggests Juliet is something extraordinary — she does not merely reflect light, she creates it. Shakespeare signals that this love is fundamentally different from Romeo’s infatuation with Rosaline.
When the two meet, they share a sonnet (1.5.92–105), with Romeo comparing Juliet to a “holy shrine” and himself to a “pilgrim.” The shared sonnet form — with its alternating lines and perfect rhyme — suggests their love is mutual, equal, and harmonious, unlike the one-sided Petrarchan model.
Patriarchal Society and the Role of Women
Elizabethan England was a deeply patriarchal society. Women were legally the property of their fathers until marriage, when ownership transferred to their husbands. Daughters were expected to be obedient, chaste, and silent. A father had absolute authority over his children’s marriages — disobedience was not just rude, it was a violation of the social order.
Lord Capulet embodies this authority. When Juliet refuses to marry Paris in Act 3, Scene 5, Capulet erupts: “Hang thee, young baggage! Disobedient wretch!” He threatens to disown her: “An you be mine, I’ll give you to my friend; / An you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in the streets.” This is not unusual cruelty by Elizabethan standards — it is a father asserting his legal and moral right. An Elizabethan audience would have understood Capulet’s fury, even if they sympathised with Juliet.
Juliet’s refusal to marry Paris is a radical act of defiance in Elizabethan terms. She challenges patriarchal authority, religious expectations, and family honour all at once. Shakespeare positions the audience to admire her courage while recognising the danger she faces.
Family Honour and the Feud
The feud between the Montagues and Capulets is not a minor disagreement — it is a matter of family honour that defines every character’s identity. In Renaissance Italian culture (and in Elizabethan understanding of it), a family’s honour was its most valuable possession. Any insult had to be answered with violence. Tybalt, Juliet’s cousin, is the most extreme example: he lives for the feud and sees any Montague presence as a personal affront.
The Prologue establishes this world immediately: “Two households, both alike in dignity, / In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, / From ancient grudge break to new mutiny.” The phrase “ancient grudge” tells us the feud is so old that nobody remembers its cause — yet it still generates fresh violence (“new mutiny”). This is Shakespeare’s point: the feud is irrational, self-perpetuating, and destructive. It creates the conditions that make the lovers’ deaths inevitable.
Shakespeare set many of his plays in Italy because it was associated with passion, romance, danger, and political intrigue. Italy was seen as a place where emotions ran hot and violence was commonplace. Setting the play in Verona allowed Shakespeare to explore extreme love and extreme violence without it seeming implausible. The Italian setting also provided a safe distance: English audiences could watch a story about feuding families and destructive honour codes without feeling directly criticised.
Shakespeare drew his plot from Arthur Brooke’s poem The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet (1562), which was itself based on Italian sources. The story was well known before Shakespeare dramatised it — his audience already knew the ending, which intensifies the dramatic irony throughout.
Religion in Elizabethan England
Religion permeates Romeo and Juliet. The play is set in Catholic Verona, where Friar Lawrence is a trusted authority figure. Marriage is a sacred sacrament — once performed, it cannot be undone. This makes Romeo and Juliet’s secret marriage a trap as well as a bond: Juliet cannot marry Paris because she is already married before God. The Friar’s willingness to marry them secretly, hoping to end the feud, shows how the play interweaves personal love with wider social and religious responsibilities.
For an Elizabethan audience, suicide was a mortal sin that condemned the soul to hell. The fact that both Romeo and Juliet choose death over life without each other raises a provocative question: is their love sacred or sinful? Shakespeare refuses to answer definitively, leaving the audience to judge.
The religious imagery in Romeo and Juliet — saints, pilgrims, shrines — elevates the lovers’ passion to something spiritual. Yet their deaths by suicide would have disturbed an Elizabethan audience who believed it damned the soul. Shakespeare deliberately creates this moral tension.