Romeo and Juliet, from the Italian novella to Shakespeare's tragedy

For many, Romeo and Juliet are the love couple par excellence, and their names are bound for ever to that of William Shakespeare. Yet the English tragedy, written around 1595, is the last link in a chain of tales born in Italy. Following this chain means discovering how a novella became one of the most widespread myths of modern culture.

The Italian roots

The first recognised ancestor is a novella by Masuccio Salernitano, published in the Novellino in 1476. It tells of Mariotto and Ganozza, two young Sienese secretly married, separated by his exile and overwhelmed by a sleeping draught and a message that does not arrive in time. The essential elements of the plot are already present, but the names and the city are different.

It was Luigi da Porto of Vicenza who moved the story to Verona and gave the two lovers the names Romeo and Juliet, children of the feuding Montecchi and Cappelletti families. His Historia novellamente ritrovata di due nobili amanti was printed in Venice around 1530. Da Porto set the story in the time of Bartolomeo della Scala, lord of the city at the beginning of the 14th century.

From Bandello to Shakespeare

In 1554 Matteo Bandello included the story in his Novelle, with many more details. The tale was translated into French by Pierre Boaistuau, and from this version the Englishman Arthur Brooke drew in 1562 a long poem, The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet. This poem was Shakespeare's main source; he compressed the action into a few days and gave great prominence to figures such as Mercutio and the Nurse.

In Shakespeare Juliet is not yet fourteen, and the speed with which everything happens is part of the tragedy. The words she speaks from the balcony, «What's in a name? That which we call a rose», express the absurdity of the hatred between families: a name does not change what a person is. The line has become proverbial far beyond the English-speaking world.

Montecchi and Cappelletti

The names of the two families are not invented. Dante, in the sixth canto of the Purgatorio, mentions «Montecchi e Cappelletti» as an example of the factional strife tearing Italy apart. The Montecchi were a Veronese family of the Ghibelline party, while the Cappelletti were linked rather to the area of Cremona. There is, however, no historical evidence that Romeo and Juliet ever existed.

This has not stopped Verona from becoming the city of lovers. Since the 20th century a medieval house in Via Cappello has been pointed out as Juliet's house, with a balcony added in modern times, while in the former convent of San Francesco al Corso her supposed tomb is shown. Every year thousands of letters addressed to Juliet arrive in the city, and volunteers answer them.

A story without borders

The tragedy has inspired operas and music in every age. Vincenzo Bellini presented I Capuleti e i Montecchi in Venice in 1830, drawing on the Italian sources; Hector Berlioz composed a dramatic symphony in 1839, Charles Gounod an opera in 1867, and Sergei Prokofiev a famous ballet in the 1930s. In Italy the story was also set to music by Riccardo Zandonai, in 1922.

Whether read in the Italian novellas or in English verse, the story of Romeo and Juliet shows how a tale can travel across languages and centuries, changing shape without losing its core: two young people who love each other in a world that will not allow it, and a fate that always arrives a moment too soon.