ROMEO, WHO ART THOU? JULIET DITTO PART 1

TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES HAS BEEN FEATURING Romeo and Juliet, the 1936 flick of this Shakespeare classic. Its viewing encouraged me into gleaning tidbits from Rowse’s The Annotated Shakespeare as well as from my Internet sleuthing and other recollections. Here are Parts 1 and 2 today and tomorrow.

The Plot. Feuding families’ boy meets girl. They fall in love. The lovers die with complications a’plenty. 

Sources. Hardly an original theme. Wikipedia notes, “Romeo and Juliet borrows from a tradition of tragic love stories dating back to antiquity. It mentions Pyramus and Thisbe, where the lovers’ parents despise each other, and Pyramus falsely believes his lover Thisbe is dead. The Ephesiaca of Xenophon of Ephesus, written in the 3rd century, contains a potion that induces a deathlike sleep.”

Been there, done that.

Dante mentions the Montecchi (Montagues) and Cappelletti (Capulets) in The Divine Comedy.

And Masuccio Salernitano has Mariotto and Ganozza, “a 1476 version with a secret marriage, the colluding friar, the fray where a prominent citizen is killed, Mariotto’s exile, Ganozza’s forced marriage, the potion plot, and the crucial message that goes astray.”

Geez, where are the original screenplays anyway?

Wikipedia continues, “Luigi da Porto (1485–1529) adapted the story as Giulietta e Romeo and includes the rival families of Montecchi and Capuleti (Cappelletti) and the location in Verona. He named the friar Laurence (frate Lorenzo) and introduced the characters Mercutio (Marcuccio Guertio), Tybalt (Tebaldo Cappelletti), Count Paris (conte (Paride) di Lodrone), the faithful servant, and Giulietta’s nurse.”

The frontispiece of Giulietta e Romeo by Luigi da Porto, 1530. This and the following image from Wikipedia.   

Recounting further, “Da Porto originated the remaining basic elements of the story: the feuding families, Romeo—left by his mistress—meeting Giulietta at a dance at her house, the love scenes (including the balcony scene), the periods of despair, Romeo killing Giulietta’s cousin (Tebaldo), and the families’ reconciliation after the lovers’ suicides.”

Well, gee. These surely sum up the lovers’ complications.

The Kids’ Ages. Shakespeare says nothing specific about Romeo, but he pins down Juliet’s age precisely (with tidbits galore). Early on, her nurse says in fine iambic pentameter (in which much of the play is composed), “Faith I can tell her age unto an hour…. On Lamaas-eve at night shall she be fourteen.… ’Tis since the earthquake now eleven years.”

Rowse explains: Lamaas-tide is August 1st, thus Lamaas-eve “would be 31 July, and in the summer of 1583 there was an earthquake in Dorset which opened a large cavity in the vale of Blackmore, according to Camden.” Neatly, then, 11 + 1583 = 1594, the year in which the play takes place. Rowse gives 1594-95 for its composition; Wikipedia cites 1597 as its premiere performance.

Title page of the first edition. 

In any event, it’s clear that Juliet was fourteen. And, though Romeo might have been considerably older, I like to image he’s perhaps fifteen or thereabouts.

Tomorrow in Part 2, the lovers finally meet, with other tidbits a’plenty including Ethiope’s ear, middle-age lovers in 1936, and even Andy Devine speaking with barely a rasp. ds

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2025