The House of Juliet in Fair Verona  
Cara Giulietta…

by Dea Adria Mallin

As a professor of English, in Verona for a few days of summer opera at the incomparable Arena di Verona, I walked the short distance to La Casa di Giulietta, or the House of Juliet, to glimpse a storied balcony where a storied love began, before it took its tragic turn. I knew full well that Shakespeare’s Juliet did not speak from this balcony in this courtyard on the via Cappello in fair Verona . Nor were these the walls that Shakespeare’s Romeo did “o’erperch,” not even “with love’s light wings.” True, there had once been two leading -- and feuding -- families here, but no one has ever proved the existence of their star-crossed children. And yet, I stood before the 13th century house with its 20^th century balcony, and I was transfixed.  

That morning, the courtyard was empty, and so, in my mind’s eye, I was free to people it. And did I not see Romeo, staring upward at the silhouetted figure of Juliet? And did I not hear him?

See how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
O that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!

They speak, each in a dream of the other, as young love and first love are wont to do. I know the lines, for I have taught the play often. Ah, now Juliet! Listen!

My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee
The more I have, for both are infinite.

The tiny courtyard at via Cappello 23 is usually thronged with visitors, some waiting to pay the 3 Euro admission price of the museum to look at the interior of the restored house or pose dreamily on the balcony. So much a part of the Western mindset are Romeo and Juliet that few who visit this medieval house with its façade of golden brown brick and its creamy marble balcony ever question its verity. For those who would live in the poetry of love, if ever there was a Juliet in Verona , never mind that her family would have owned a more opulent dwelling. Never mind that the climb to the high balcony would have been too difficult, despite Romeo’s protestation that “stony limits cannot hold love out.” If this were not her house, it surely should have been.

In the courtyard is a lovely bronze sculpture of Juliet made by Nereo Constantini at the beginning of the 20^th century and donated to the site by the Lion’s Club. In the last lines of Shakespeare’s play, with the discovery of their children in the grave, Capulet asks for nothing more than the hand of Montague in a gesture of friendship to end the ruinous feud, and Montague replies, “But I can give thee more, for I will raise her statue in pure gold.” Juliet’s father agrees to do the same for Romeo. Curiously, since the appearance of the bronze statue of Juliet in the courtyard, the hopeful have gathered round to rub her right breast for luck in love, so that it is now a rich gold.  

At the play’s end, time and mutability have wreaked havoc, yet the image of the lovers lying side by side remains fixed in the mind’s eye. The passionate speed of young love has been pledged by each parent to be commemorated in sculpture, an art which is free from the dimension of time. And so, young love itself is made immutable, and the violence and darkness of the young lovers’ story is absorbed in a timeless golden image. The myth is both dramatic and eternal.

And nearly 500 years after Luigi da Porto, basing his work on an earlier Sienese novella, set the tale in Verona, followed by Shakespeare with the first Quarto in 1597 and the “good” Quarto of 1599, the story draws busloads of Shakespeare pilgrims to Verona, along with romantics from every corner of the globe.

Curiously, around the story, which is an invention, a flight of imagination, we have Shakespeare’s manuscript to turn to for fact. Yet around the historical facts, much myth is being born as guidebooks disagree on details, variously citing the families of Verona as the Capeleti, Capuleta, and Capuleti as well as the Capelli and the Cappello, the Montecci and the Montecche. The house is variously cited as having been an inn and a bordello. The building with the tomb of Juliet is located either at 5 or at 35 via del Pontieri, and is called either a former Franciscan monastery or an orphanage. I had the Italian Tourism office in New York contact the Comune di Verona, and they call it a convent!

Should you be in Verona from the end of August through September, look for Sognando Shakespeare (Dreaming Shakespeare), a troupe of  talented young actors in costume who wander around the medieval corners of Verona performing scenes from Romeo e Giulietta  in Italian. From June through August , there are performances at the Teatro Shakespeariano, with one week of English language performances by the Royal Shakespeare Company.

There are formal Romeo and Juliet tours of Verona through the narrow streets to the ancient and graceful cloister where an evocative sarcophagus of red marble, the red marble of Verona ’s streets, lies, empty. The sarcophagus became the official Tomb of Juliet in 1937, just two years after the city of Verona built the balcony onto the house that it had acquired in 1907. If you are so moved, and multitudes from around the world seem to be, you can marry in Verona in a civil ceremony at the tomb or in medieval style in a house just down the street from the balcony.

Or you can stuff a love letter into the cracks of the walls, but don’t use chewing gum to affix it, and don’t write (as in graffiti) your heart’s joys or despairs on the walls. Verona washes the walls, but because the writing comes right back on the walls, lovers are being urged to post their notes online, and Verona is considering flashing them on a giant screen in the courtyard.  

From home, you can pen a letter to Romeo or to Juliet, and Verona ’s postmaster will take pains to deliver it. Verona employs a team of “secretaries” to answer all the letters that arrive daily. And poets take note: you can compose a richly romantic love letter about amore eterno and send it to Il Club Giulietta (Juliet Club) di Verona, established ten years ago to read all the messages of love, passion, dreaming, anguish, and hope. You just might win the 11^th annual literary award for the best love letter. “Cara Giulietta…”