In Romeo and Juliet, who is more practical? Give reasons to support your answer.

I agree with akannan, but would offer a few additions,
based on considering Shakespeare as a man of the
theatre.

It would have been highly unusual, theatrically,
for the young female character (referred to as the ingenue) to be headstrong and
independent.  Young female characters in Shakespeare's theatrical world were
conventionally dutiful and obedient.  If you know Shakespeare's play Much Ado
About Nothing, you'll see what I'm talking about, if you consider the ingenue
character, Hero, as compared to the unconventional character of Beatrice.  So,
Shakespeare has taken a very young female ingenue in this play
(R&J) and given her all the headstrong valor usually
reserved for the young male lead.

Romeo, on the other hand,
employs much flowery language, and, in the text his speeches convey many of the
attributes of a typical ingenue.  An especially interesting comparison between Romeo and
Juliet is the different ways they approach the Friar for help later in the play.  The
Friar must chastise Romeo ("Art thou a man?") and works hard to convince him to come out
of hiding and face his banishment.  Juliet, on the other hand, runs into the Friar's
cell brandishing a knife and threatening to kill herself rather than marry Paris.  This
just after she has endured one of the most intense scenes of the play, in which her
father tells her to "beg, starve, die in the streets."

What
is interesting theatrically to consider is that, in Shakespeare's company of actors,
both of these characters would have been played by young men -- young men very close in
age to each other.  Almost interchangeable!  This gives some frame of reference when one
ponders where the heck Shakespeare got the idea to have his female ingenue be full of
fight and logic, while making his young male lead softer in nature and full of flowery
language.

If the actors could be interchangeable, why not
the qualities of the characters they play?  And so might the very innovative characters
of Romeo and Juliet have been born.