The Adolescent Suicides of Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet offers us a spectacle of suicide—suicide brought about by the blocking or thwarting of the adolescent's attempt to transfer his libidinal energies to a nonincestuous object and to achieve thereby one of life's major separations, the separation of the sexually mature child from the parent. On the other side of this psychological coin is, of course, reunion; that is to say, separation from the parent is accomplished through attachment to a parental substitute. In the union of young lovers there is a kind of magical reunion with the lost, or relinquished, object. But Shakespeare's play differentiates itself from other artistic treatments of this problem by diffusing the oppositional force that produces the life-destroying trauma. In Sophocles’ Antigone, for example, Haemon's attempt to unite with the heroine is blocked by a single individual, his father, Creon. In Romeo and Juliet we have to reckon not only upon individual fathers but upon entire families, indeed, upon an entire society. Accordingly, I believe it will be possible to discover in Shakespeare's tragedy a particular syndrome leading to the suicidal behavior of youth. Our introduction to Romeo comes largely through the mouth of his father. Shortly after the termination of the swordplay that opens the tragedy, Montague describes for us the manner in which his adolescent son walks about during the night, “augmenting” the “fresh morning's dew” with “tears,” and “Adding to clouds more clouds with his deep sighs.” Montague goes on,