 Early psychoanalytic critics saw the problem of Romeo and Juliet in terms of Romeo 's impulsiveness , deriving from " ill @-@ controlled , partially disguised aggression " , which leads both to Mercutio 's death and to the double suicide . Romeo and Juliet is not considered to be exceedingly psychologically complex , and sympathetic psychoanalytic readings of the play make the tragic male experience equivalent with sicknesses . Norman Holland , writing in 1966 , considers Romeo 's dream as a realistic " wish fulfilling fantasy both in terms of Romeo 's adult world and his hypothetical childhood at stages oral , phallic and oedipal " – while acknowledging that a dramatic character is not a human being with mental processes separate from those of the author . Critics such as Julia <unk> focus on the hatred between the families , arguing that this hatred is the cause of Romeo and Juliet 's passion for each other . That hatred manifests itself directly in the lovers ' language : Juliet , for example , speaks of " my only love sprung from my only hate " and often expresses her passion through an anticipation of Romeo 's death . This leads on to speculation as to the playwright 's psychology , in particular to a consideration of Shakespeare 's grief for the death of his son , Hamnet . 
