Robert Watson’s essay “Wherefore art thou Tereu?: Juliet and the Legacy of Rape” is a thought provoking rethinking of Romeo and Juliet. We normally think of Romeo and Juliet as the paradigmatic love story. He argues that the story is in fact a study of the role of perception in identifying lovers and rapists: “Whether Romeo is to be viewed as lover, husband, or rapist depends on what each on-stage observer knows and does not know at that particular moment.” (p. 3)
He shows how even in love passages, Shakespeare’s choice of imagery contains allusions to rape narratives in classical and contemporary literature. The poem on which Romeo and Juliet is based, Arthur Brooke’s poem “The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet” casts a much dimmer view of Romeo’s motives.
These allusions help the audience understand that both Juliet and her families concerns about Romeo’s motives are more than just the modesty of young love or family prejudice. They reflect tendencies and concerns about rape in the surrounding culture. For example, Juliet’s second suitor is named Paris. In Greek mythology, Paris stole, and presumably raped, Helen of Troy. Watson further points out that forced marriages were recognized even by contemporaries as a form of socially sanctioned rape.
Though Watson does not use the term “rape culture”, Watson astutely observes its presence even in this most romantic of plays. He also makes a secondary observation that this juxtaposition of perfect romantic love and rape is intentional and meant to disturb. More »
