Here then, is the theme of The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet.
The play’s legacy is the romantic relationship between the two title characters.
Is the tragic end of Romeo and Juliet attributable to disordered affections? Or, instead, are they the victims of a disordered society?
Is their love the problem? Or is it the church, the state, and the family that’s the problem?
The answer to both questions is yes.
The institutions of Verona are weak: feuding families, ineffectual clergy, and inept rulers. Romeo and Juliet divinize their love as a new absolute authority. The results for society are devastating.
Their families lose their sole heirs, the Prince loses a brace of kinsmen, and the Friar must leave in disgrace. Verona has no future.
Shakespeare, a Protestant playwright, exposes the tragic end of a particularly medieval form of social hierarchy.
The answer, the play shows, is not to insert individual autonomy into a corporate social structure. That cure is as bad as the disease.
Against the impersonal fate asserted by the play’s characters, we can intuit Shakespeare’s authorial providence.
Against the inadequate responses of Verona’s fathers, friar, and Prince, we can intuit the hierarchies of a more orderly society.
Against a version of romantic love that applies the signs and symbols of religious devotion, we can intuit the more holy mystery: that human marriage points to Christ’s love for the church.
Experiments in Criticism 
Jonathan,
How is it going overall on this project? What is the road map?
On this email I’m using to reply, it is interesting to me that because you are identifying the problems clearly, it seems also to me that summed together it is also a summary of why the age of Kings came to an end. So, so much internal family warfare coupled with marriage being used, out of all proportion to how Christian teaching, as the basis for mitigating the interfamily feuding. By resting its goal for peace on the wrong foundation, it made it worse and more vicious. In the end, I think the age of Kings collapsed because everyone was tired of it not being able to provide for peace. Some of the replacement options were in fact more vicious, but it was no longer the old way of doing things. That age died. Shakespeare captured that whole ethos of cultural decay and death in his play. In some ways, it reminds me of the sin of David that eventually had the consequence of ripping the nation apart through civil war and angry betrayed and jealous royal relatives.
-Jonathan. ________________________________
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