Everyone knows Romeo and Juliet. There are amoebic life forms in Amazonian rainforests that could summarise the plot of Shakespeare’s most popular love tragedy.    

Yet our familiarity with the story and Elizabethan context perhaps explains why many students and - whisper it - some English teachers make sweeping generalisations and inaccurate assumptions about this classic text.

In thinking that we know the story, and time of its creation, inside out, pupils commit simplistic comments to paper. When it comes to this Juliet and her Romeo we might say:

For never was a story of more misconception,
And we can’t just blame Baz Luhrmann’s direction.

Here are five common R&J errors, and how to avoid them:

1. ‘In the balcony scene, Juliet succumbs to Romeo’s passionate courtship.’

Usually, students focus on Juliet’s “feminine” passivity and Romeo’s “masculine” dominance. A more subtle interpretation would involve Shakespeare’s subversion of conventional gender roles, with Juliet shaping Romeo’s lustful advances into a marriage proposal: “Deny thy father and refuse thy name.”

Juliet interrupts, teases and taunts.

Critics have noted how Shakespeare uses avian imagery that depicts Juliet as a (stereotypically male) falconer and Romeo as a (generally female) domesticated falcon. Like a Red Bull drinker, Romeo has wings, but, in this scene Juliet is doing the luring.

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2. ‘It was common for girls to marry at 13. In Elizabethan times, fathers made all the decisions on behalf of their children.’

Not quite. Early marriages occurred largely among the nobility, with girls of lower social status mostly marrying later.

Yes, the father was the family figurehead. But as C William Griffin explains, “the medieval church reminded parents of their duty to consider their children’s view in marriage arrangements”.

Rather than viewing Lord Capulet’s rage at Juliet’s refusal to marry Paris (“Hang, beg, starve, die in the streets”) as an Elizabethan norm, a more nuanced view would involve a violent overreaction, even in a patriarchal society.

3.‘’A plague o’ both your houses’ is a powerful rhetorical device, showing Mercutio’s anger towards the deadly feud.’

Shakespeare’s use of “plague” certainly emphasises the rage of moribund Mercutio. But focusing on the diction as pure rhetoric overlooks the importance of a seemingly insignificant plot point from Act 5 Scene 2:

Friar John: Where the infectious pestilence did reign,
Seal’d up the doors and would not let us forth...

Friar Laurence: Who bare my letter then to Romeo?

Friar John: I could not send it - here it is again -
Nor get a messenger to bring it thee,
So fearful were they of infection.

Laurence interprets John’s blocked route to Mantua as rotten luck, but some critics view this as a supernatural intervention: not just a figure of speech but an “occult revenge upon the families that have killed him”’.

4. ‘Romeo receives a lenient punishment. Banishment means he only has to move to Mantua.’

Banishment is obviously a lesser sanction than being put to death. But to fully understand Romeo’s plight, students need to know the grim consequences of banishment. In medieval times, exile was often a death penalty in all but name, with the condemned cast out beyond the protection of the city’s walls, left to forever fend for themselves in the anarchic wilderness. Little wonder Romeo cries out:

‘…exile hath more terror in his look Much more than death…. There is no world without Verona walls, But purgatory, torture, hell itself.’

Christine Shaw has highlighted the fate of banished elites in Renaissance Italy: financial turmoil, depression and separation from loved ones. Far from an easy option, banishment provokes Romeo’s suicidal urges.

5. ‘Romeo and Juliet end their lives because they would rather be together in the afterlife than apart on earth.’

On the surface, this interpretation makes sense. After all, Petrarchan lovers conventionally cherish the prospect of heavenly encounters. And the sexualised imagery (“This is thy sheath; there rest, and let me die”) of Juliet’s death implies, ahem, perpetual penetration.

But this angle ignores the influence of the Protestant tradition on Shakespeare’s writing. Ramie Targoff makes it clear that Protestant teaching allowed “no possibility of spousal reunion after death… death would bring an end to all erotic bonds”.

Indeed, Romeo recognises that death kills love rather than sustaining it. Rather than depicting the doomed pair’s love as eternal, Shakespeare’s Protestant faith shapes a view of love as transient and tied to the limits of mortal flesh.

This shift in focus is profound, ensuring that “Romeo and Juliet becomes Shakespeare’s greatest expression of carpe diem”.   

Looking at historical and critical context in this kind of depth might strike some teachers as overcomplicating the teaching of a GCSE text. Yet drip-feeding these ideas into your lessons will allow pupils to appreciate Shakespeare and his time period in far more nuanced ways. As a result, the quality of your students’ analysis will move from a comedy of errors to just as you like it.

Mark Roberts is an assistant headteacher in the South West of England