It must be pointed out, just as a general consideration, that the 'age of consent', wherever fixed, is a legal concept, not a law of nature. When Shax wrote R&J, the ancient ruling from C14 was that it should be 12. The present law is late C19. Wikipedia states

"A concern that young girls were being sold into brothels led Parliament to raise the age of consent to 13 in 1875 under the Offences against the Person Act 1875. After W. T. Stead's Maiden Tribute articles, the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 raised the age of consent to 16."


Wikipedia's article "Ages of consent in Europe" is informative as to the variations which persist to this day, just in Europe.

So all the faff about Juliet &c is beside the point. (As, to drift a bit, was the statement that someone, I forget who, who should have known better, complained that Shax had been encouraging premarital sex, when R&J were in fact a most proper & exemplarily moral young couple, who took all the trouble to meet at Friar Laurence's cell to get married before they would go to bed.)

Jerry Lee Lewis's marriage was moreover perfectly lawful in the state where it occurred. The extent to which he was breaking any laws by having intercourse with his lawful wife in states & countries where the age of consent was higher than her actual age at the time, I believe remains something of a woolly area.

~M~