Image from 1968’s Romeo and Juliet, directed by Franco Zeffirelli

Juliet in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is 13 years old. Shakespeare doesn’t tell us how old Romeo is, but my high school English teacher said he was 28. If she was right, and you put the star-crossed lovers in California in 2017, Juliet would be jailbait and Romeo would face a spell in the slammer if their love was consummated out of wedlock. Friar Laurence, who knew about the unholy alliance and secretly married the two, might get into trouble, too, despite his saintly status.

Anne Hathaway and Shakespeare. She was 26; 18 was he.

The friar might be considered a “mandated reporter,” or a person of trust and influence over youth, like a teacher or coach, who should report such goings-on to Child Protective Services or local police. Robert Fellmeth, founder and head of the Children’s Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego, says the state Child Protective Services is generally better equipped to handle sex-with-minor cases, but local police can do a good job.

San Diegans agree that the local police did a good job in the case of Eric von Metzke, a teacher at San Diego Junior Theatre who in his mid-30s had sex with two of his underage female students and was sentenced on June 20 to three years in prison for his acts with one of them. (The other refused to talk to police.)

Because there are multiple indications that Von Metzke’s sex with minors was well known by several in the organization, and because there have been other events suggesting that the Junior Theatre’s culture has been inordinately permissive, investigators may conclude that some administrators were mandated reporters who should have turned in Von Metzke long before he finally faced cops.

California’s penal code lists a number of persons as mandated reporters: teachers, instructional aides, day-camp administrators, employees of a child-care facility, Head Start teachers, public assistance workers, foster parents, social workers, probation or parole officers, physicians, psychiatrists, clergy members, police department employees, clinical counselors, coaches, and many others. “It’s a crime not to report when you are a mandated reporter,” says Fellmeth. If information comes from more than one source, “you are in trouble if you don’t report.”

The age of consent in California is 18. It is illegal for anyone to engage in sexual relations with a person under 18 unless it is the minor’s spouse. The system is tiered by age. If the person engaging in sex with a minor is less than three years older than the underage person, the act is a misdemeanor. If the person is more than three years older, it is a felony. Those over 21 having sex with someone under 16 might get hit with harsher penalties.

However, almost one-half of high school students have engaged in intercourse, so a three-year age difference in underage sex is not likely to be pursued by the law, says Fellmeth. “The jails would be full,” he says.

The age of consent is between 16 and 18 in all the states. The acceptable difference in ages is zero in California but around three in other states. It’s five years in Hawaii and Maine. In 11 states (not including California), someone having sex with an underage person may claim that the partner was deceitful in telling his or her age and should not be charged.

Today’s laws are much tougher than they were in ages past. Until the 1880s in America, most states set the minimum age at 10 to 12. Much of the credit for the reform goes to women who were then proposing women’s suffrage, while opposing drunkenness and slavery.

In antiquity, the age of consent for tribes coincided with menstruation for females and growth of pubic hair for males. In 12th-century Europe, the accepted age was around 12 for girls and 14 for boys, but in some cases the consent age dipped down to 7.

American colonies generally followed English tradition. In 1689 in Virginia, Mary Hathaway was 9 when she married William Williams.

Earlier, there was another Hathaway marriage that fascinates historians. In 1582, Anne Hathaway was 26 when she married William Shakespeare, who was only 18. Six months later she gave birth to their daughter. Some historians believe it was a shotgun marriage forced by Hathaway’s family, but that is speculation. The Hathaways had money and social standing; Shakespeare’s family was in financial ruin. Some say Shakespeare wanted to marry another lass, but Anne’s pregnancy forced him to the altar, and for the rest of his life he was bitter. Others say that’s balderdash; Anne, from a well-heeled family, would have been a prize catch. And besides, in those days in Stratford-upon-Avon, a large number of brides were already pregnant when they went to the altar.

Then there was the unhappy story of Jane Mecom, who was born in 1712. Never heard of her? She was the younger sister of Benjamin Franklin. They were very close and corresponded frequently. That was unusual, because girls in those days generally did not attend school because men considered the female to be intellectually inferior, overly sentimental, and suited only for a life as a housewife. But to the extent he could, Ben Franklin taught his sister how to read and write. In one letter, Ben scolded her for being overly sexual. Look who was talking! Ben was notorious for his bedroom escapades.

In any case, Jane Mecom at age 15 married a nearly illiterate, mentally unstable saddler, Edward Mecom. Some believe that Jane had had an affair at age 15, had become pregnant, and married Mecom, who was not the father, to rescue the family’s reputation. That pregnancy resulted in a miscarriage. If the story is true, the strategy boomeranged. Mecom spent years in debtors’ prison. Still, the Mecoms had 12 children. Jane, who died in her 80s, outlived all but one of them.

To keep the wolf from the door, Jane Mecom boiled soap and took in boarders; she and two of her daughters opened a shop to sell caps and bonnets they made using materials sent by one of Ben’s friends from London. In those days, women could not earn money without the consent of their husbands. Her penniless husband must have given consent — possibly from prison.