Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet": Individuals and Families

In the period of Renaissance (14c-16c), lots of Giants like Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) were turned out and made a lot of creative jobs. They were not only experts of limited fields, but also multi-talented geniuses who were excellent in many fields at the same time. The free and liberated atmosphere of that age enabled humans to make extraordinary human development in such huge scale. I am interested in the description of humans by Shakespeare because he himself was one of the great playwrights in this period.

The love story of "Romeo and Juliet" has continued to be remembered among people and performed on stages or screens around the world as well as other works by Shakespeare(1564-1616). That is because it treated one of the comprehensive themes in terms of marriage or love, especially, the problem between the individuals and their families. This problem has been deeply rooted in religion, culture and succession of the family around the world.

The Western cultures were basically originated by Greece and Rome. However, they made revolutionary changes at Renaissance, and since then the importance of individuals has been swinging back and forth, and coming to the present situation. In such a process, the following words spoken by Juliet were truly significant and epoch-making and the words still sound new in some parts of the society.

'O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name! ...

'Tis but thy name that is my enemy.
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor any other part
Belonging to a man...

Here, she wants to liberate the individual (Romeo) from his family (Montague). She stresses the physical body of an individual compared with the family which has no body parts, but is an abstract and heavy pressure to the individual.

In the modern society, the word such as "family" and "love" seem to be talked softly and comfortablly. Ironically, these are now considered to be the last forts to protect humans from the dangers of the highly industrilized society. It seems that "the forts" have been getting more and more faragile in the excessively competitive societies.

Thanks to Romeo and Juliet, the problems between family and individual are no longer the severe obstacles to develop the freedom of human beings. However, some people insist to such old-fashioned, momentary ideas, which often causes serious problems to individuals around them. Other people only enjoy watching them expecting the happy endings.