The play begins with representatives of the two families that we never see again. Sampson and Gregory manifest the power of hierarchy: “The quarrel is between our masters and us their men.” This is the way authority works. Everyone has to serve somebody.
That familial hierarchy must be reconciled with other authorities, namely the law. Sampson and Gregory ask, “Is the law on our side?” This world contains competing hierarchies.
The punishment for transgressing those hierarchies is death: symbolically or literally. “If ever you disturb our streets again,” the Prince says, “Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace.”
Part of Romeo’s problem is his unhealthy devotion to love. He replicates the oaths of covenantal death that mark the hierarchies of the family and state: “She hath forsworn to love, and in that vow / Do I live dead that live to tell it now.”
Romeo uses spiritual language to describe his devotion: “the devout religion of mine eye.” There is a competing third institution to the family and state: the church. Romeo sees romantic love as that spiritual institution’s embodiment.
Mercutio and the Nurse voice another view of love, though one that is no less dependent on hierarchy. For them, love and sex are physically embodiments of authority. The Nurse talks about women lying on their backs and having children as a result of marriage. Mercutio talks about sex from a male point of view as a way of asserting power and gaining pleasure. So this is this first act’s key tension: is romantic love part of the familial hierarchy, the spiritual hierarchy, or some kind of general societal hierarchy (i.e. men over women)?
We see the covenantal/symbolic side of familial death in Capulet’s conversation with Tybalt. Capulet will exile Tybalt if the young man questions his superior’s authority.
Romeo and Juliet exchange a sonnet in their first dialogue that is overloaded with religious imagery. If much of Act 1 reveals a world marked by sin, then Romeo believes romantic love has the ability to take that sin away.
Experiments in Criticism 