peare--a working commercial dramatist, not a university intellectual theorist--believed they were ready to hear.
That is the question to which the remainder of this essay will be addressed. The intent is not to analyse the play as a work of art, but to employ it as the lens through which to view late-Elizabethan England, and to attempt to construct a social micro-history of that age and nation from the attitudes and values reflected in the play, supplemented by other materials from that era that bear upon the central issues of the play. Those issues are the relationship of love and marriage and the relationship between the individual and the family, in both cases primarily as they relate to young women. Before proceeding further, it may be best to briefly make the case for these as the primary issues at hand.
First of all, however, there is an important limitation to studying Elizabethan England through reference to Romeo and Juliet. There are no contemporary references to Romeo and Juliet. However at least one commentator regarded Shakespeare as the leading English play
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