Was Shakespeare concerned with social issues?

[fiabeg]

I am posting this question because in “Romeo and Juliet” the person who sold the poison to Romeo tells him: “ My poverty, but not my will, consents to sell you the poison”. So we can conclude that if there was not poverty, Romeo wouldn’t have been able to get the poison, therefore he wouldn’t have killed himself. It seems that Shakespeare is sending the message that poverty is causing the tragedy.

[JacobF]

On the whole, I think Romeo and Juliet dealt with political issues more than social ones. The fact that Paris had the political power to send people to kill Juliet's family if she didn't marry him was a pretty big conflict, and the whole heir to the capulet/montague thing was really political. I think you may be twisting that quote a bit; i think it simply means he would never sell him poison if he needed the money so badly. it could be something deeper, but shakespeare doesn't usually give deep meaning to the speech of peasants and poor people in his plays.

[fiabeg]

Shakespeare could have decided that the apothecary used your words: “I would never sell you the poison if I needed the money so badly”. But Shakespeare didn’t, he included the word poverty. So he is intentionally putting on the table the issue of poverty. Did he do it because he was concerned with social issues? Is there information available regarding Shakespeare social views? Has any scholar researched this topic?

[kiki1982]

It depends what you mean by 'social issues'.

Of course you can argue that poverty partly causes the suicide of Romeo... And that's probably why Shakespeare wrote that sentence in his play. But of course, the whole drama of the drama is always that circumstances come together and really strengthen each other: Juliet wouldn't have killed herself if Romeo hadn't done so and Juliet wouldn't have contemplated her 'death' in the first place if she had been allowed to arry Romeo in the first place etc etc etc. There is probably more but I can't remember anymore (too difficult a plot...)

There are other social issues that Shakespeare addressed:
in King Lear, f.e., he addresses the question of giving the whole inheritance to the first son and addresses the problem of illegitimate children who didn't have a right to anything, in fact, because their fathers were over-active...

Other things are for example new-found individualism, jealousy...

Writers always are concerned with social issues and that's usually what they write about...