Marketing Juliet

“For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”

As far as the finances of the city of Verona are concerned, the tourist industry that has grown up around Shakespeare’s star-cross’d lovers is far from a story of woe.

Never mind that Juliet is a fictional character, and never mind that the famous balcony on the 13th century house at via Cappello, 23 was added in the 20th century; tourists flock to the Casa di Giulietta anyway to photograph the balcony and bring themselves luck in love by rubbing the right breast of the statue of Juliet in the courtyard. Feeling up someone for luck, who didn’t exactly enjoy much luck in love herself is ironic, and doing it in the age of Me Too seems a bit dodgy.

The covered passageway to the courtyard is covered with visitors’ declarations of love. To protect the walls, the city has put up laminate panels that can withstand the onslaught of magic marker and pieces of paper stuck on with chewing gum.

Visiting Juliet’s supposed house goes back at least to the 19th century. Lord Byron was there and so was Charles Dickens, who reported that it had “degenerated into a most miserable little inn” with “a grim-visaged dog, viciously panting in a doorway, who would certainly have had Romeo by the leg, the moment he put it over the wall, if he had existed and been at large in those times” (Pictures from Italy).

Like Dickens, today’s pilgrims can stroll on from Juliet’s house to her tomb in the crypt of what used to be the Convent of San Francesco al Corso and is now a fresco museum. Perhaps, like Dickens, we should treat the believers with indulgence.

People from all over the world write to Juliet for advice on matters of the heart or to tell their own love stories. You simply address your letter to “Juliet, Verona.” If you’re in Verona, there are a couple of dedicated Juliet mailboxes. No stamp? No worries. Juliet has an email address. According to the Juliet Club (http://www.julietclub.com/en/) every communication is translated, responded to, and archived. You can even become a volunteer secretary to Juliet yourself if you fancy it. Apparently I’d have known all this long before now if I’d seen the 2010 film Letters to Juliet.

Shakespeare (who clearly had more stamina than I when faced with 3,000 lines of rhymed couplets) based his play on a poem by Arthur Brooke, “The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet,” published in 1562. Brooke was inspired by Matteo Bandello, whose 1530 novella “Giulietta e Romeo” he had translated. Before Bandello came versions of the story by Luigi da Porto (“Historia novellamente ritrovata di due nobili amanti”) and Masuccio Salernitano “Mariotto e Ganozza.” Whether or not the Romeo and Juliet story is based on fact (as da Porto claims) isn’t known; however, the families did exist. Dante refers to the Montecchi and Cappelletti in Purgatorio, VI.

So what about Romeo in all this tourist frenzy? Well, you can see the outside of what is billed as the Casa di Romeo, but much like the bridegroom at a wedding, Romeo otherwise takes a back seat. Here in Verona, Juliet is the main event.Read more