What exactly did "running away" mean in Shakespeare's time?
[VERY long post ahead]
So I was pondering over Romeo and Juliet and how their marriage would have turned out if they survived. Unfortunately, I do not have much knowledge on history, hence me asking people here.
Romeo and Juliet being ignorant of the consequences of their decisions is very much an integral part of their characters and does well to reflect their youthful naivety.
But it got me thinking, I have seen stories set in olden times of princesses/ladies running away from their duties and arranged marriage to "be free".
A royal/rich person romanticizing the freedom that the life of a commoner offers is rather prevalent, no? I think of the White Princess (which is ahistorical I know) that has a scene where Henry VII laments to Elizabeth of York about who he could have been if he were not king.
But how does this correspond to the reality of the times? There is something romantic about someone sacrificing duty and privilege to escape with their love, but was this something that really existed in the minds of nobles back then? Did they yearn to "run away and be free"? Did they romanticize the life of the common person?
I don't know any person in these time who was fed up with the obligations of their position so much so that they chose to run away and live like a common person, do you? Genuine question. I imagine it would be difficult to do such a thing if one was raised to be honourable and dutiful. Then, there is the fact that running away to become a commoner meant leaving a comfortable life to possible become a peasant - and was that desirable? (Also idk if all commoners = peasants)
Let's say Romeo and Juliet do survive and marry, what next? How will they survive? If their families shun them, if the nobility shuns them, where will they go and what will they do to survive? I am not asking these questions to take the joy out of reading the work.
Juliet is someone who is forced into an arranged marriage at a very young age by her father, not unlike many noble girls. But she falls in love, and actually runs away. There was a certain level of anonymity back then, was there not? I wonder if any other noble lady pulled a Juliet and actually succeeded. Seems a little too romantic to be true.
Is there any person in history who forsook all the power and privilege of their position to run away? It seems absurd, but then I think of someone like Gautama Buddha, and there is this trope called "Noble Fugitive" https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NobleFugitive
Also I might be losing it, but I think there is another Shakespeare story where a nobleperson runs away???
I think running away is still very difficult to do, but in the mind of young girl like Juliet, I wonder if a life of destitution and being away from family was preferable to being a pawn in a loveless marriage. Again, I know Juliet is meant to be naive, but I wonder how many rich people actually chose that life to free themselves.
Also (last point I SWEAR), I know many noblegirls back then joined covenants instead of being married, but again, I don't think they ran away to covenants, did they? Quite sure their family allowed them to go there.