Chapter 1 - Character
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
Juliet's balcony, Verona
In the Italian town of Verona, the tourist authorities have taken Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, and in particular the character of Juliet, to their hearts. Despite the historical tenuousness of the association of Juliet with Verona, a suitable medieval townhouse has been designated Juliet's house, and a balcony was added in the 1930s to make the setting photogenically consonant with the play's most iconic moment, when Juliet calls down from her balcony to her new lover. Streams of visitors add lovestruck graffiti to the walls, gain luck from stroking the right breast of a modern bronze statue of Juliet, and apparently address numerous letters requesting help in matters of the heart (rather oddly, since Juliet's wasn't an entirely successful love affair to aspire to) to ‘Juliet, Verona’, which are duly answered by a multilingual team of agony aunt volunteers known as the ‘Juliet club’.
While the curious afterlife of Juliet in Verona is an extreme case, it nicely illustrates two aspects of our abiding interest in, and attitude to, Shakespeare's characterisation. Firstly, projecting a real person from the words of Shakespeare's plays involves an extreme effort of will. We desperately want to believe that Juliet is a real person – a desire bound up here with narratives of travel, of holiday snapshots as consumption, of a sentimental version of romantic love, of the modern vestiges of pilgrimage – and thus the tourist offices provide what we want, complete with medieval-effect balcony and a substitute Juliet in the form of a statue.
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- The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare , pp. 1 - 22Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007