ASEBL Journal – Volume 11 Issue 1, January 2015
From Blood Feuds to Civility:
Romeo and Juliet and the
Changing Evolutionary Role of Cultural Traditions
Ryan O. Begley, Kathryn Coe, and Craig T. Palmer
Abstract
Evidence from ethnographic and historical records suggests that blood feuds have
been a common aspect of human existence. Conventional evolutionary explanations
have seen them as examples of nepotism and kin solidarity explainable by kin selection. However, the same records also reveal certain aspects of blood feuds for which
kin selection alone cannot account. Examples include traditional rules and practices
regulating blood feuds and the tendency of blood feuds to decrease in state-level social organizations – where some overarching political entity brings into close and persistent contact, within state boundaries, multiple categories of individuals with differing ancestry. Hence a universal challenge in the formation and persistence of states is
to persuade individuals to cooperate with non-kin. Tactics often include a combination
of deemphasizing kinship while emphasizing forms of fictive kinship among “fellow
citizens” of the state. Essential to this goal is the suppression of traditional forms of
justice – especially blood feuds – that threaten state cohesion. It is within this context
that the events in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet unfold. While the story of “starcross’d lovers” is attractive, great historical significance can be found in the blood
feud that drives the tragedy. A full understanding of Romeo and Juliet requires its
placement within the framework of this fundamental shift in human history from traditional kinship behavior and social organization to the civility of modern nationstates.
Introduction
Critics have long and rightly treated Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as a tragic story
of “star-cross’d lovers” (1.0.5) and there is a wealth of evolutionary psychology literature on such topics as romantic love and sexuality that can shed great light on this aspect of the play (see Buss, 2003).1 A significantly smaller portion of its criticism,
however, focuses on the feud central to its plot. Among the minority was 18th century
Shakespearian editor Nicholas Rowe, who concluded that “The Design in Romeo and
Juliet, is plainly the Punishment of their two Families, for the unreasonable Feuds and
Animosities that had been so long kept up between ‘em, and occasion’d the Effusion
of so much Blood” (1948[1709], p. XXXI). More recently, Glenn Clark examined the
roles of civility and social order within the play. We expand on these perspectives,
placing the play in a larger evolutionary and anthropological framework through focusing on the prevalence of blood feuds in traditional, kinship-based social environ-
2