Is Romeo too old for Juliet?

Answer 1

First of all, it isn't clear just how old Romeo is. If he were sixteen, even nowadays he would not be too old for a fourteen-year-old. And our ideas nowadays about whether people should marry those much older than themselves are really quite peculiar in light of the history of the world and the common practise in most of the world. In 1540 (24 years before Shakespeare was born), King Henry VIII married his fifth wife, Catherine Howard. She was a teenager (possibly only 15) and he was almost fifty.