It is possibly the best-known love story in history. The romance of Romeo and Juliet and its tragic end owe their worldwide fame to the pen of William Shakespeare, but… did they really exist? What is reality and what is myth in this well-known story? Was the English playwright based on a historical fact, or did everything come from his imagination?
Well, although it may seem like a lie, there is a little bit of everything. Join us to discover who the Capulets and the Montagues were, and where Shakespeare got the inspiration for his most famous work.
There are many visitors who come year after year to the famous Juliet’s House, located in the city of Verona Most of them, without a doubt, know that this is a fictional character, from the pen of William Shakespeare. So, what’s the point of visiting the house of a person who never existed?
They may do so, carried away by the force of a story that never dies and that surpasses the limits of time. Because Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare is, indeed, the most famous work about lovers, but it is not the only one, as we will see below.
A tragic love story
Here is the first surprise: the story of Romeo and Juliet It was not invented by William Shakespeare That of the English poet was one of the many versions that circulated about the two lovers, some of them much earlier in time.
But before delving into these previous versions, it is necessary to briefly explain the argument that has become famous, the one that came from Shakespeare’s pen. Practically everyone knows the story of Romeo and Juliet by heart, but, in case you don’t know it yet, we must warn you that you may find spoilers in this article.
Having said this, we will summarize by saying that The story revolves around Romeo, belonging to the Montague family, and Juliet, from the Capulet family Both families live in Verona and are rivals. Despite this rivalry, the young people fall in love and want to get married, but Julieta’s father has already planned the marriage of his daughter with another man. Juliet and Romeo meet secretly and, with the help of a friar, manage to get married in secret.
Events accelerate and, in revenge for the death of his friend Mercutio, Romeo kills Juliet’s cousin in a duel, so he must flee the city. Meanwhile, the young woman has hatched a plan with the friar: she will drink a potion that will leave her in a coma for forty-two hours, enough time for her to be believed dead. As soon as Romeo returns to the city, she will wake up and they will both flee, free.
But the message with the young woman’s plan does not reach Romeo, so the boy believes that his wife has really died. So, determined to follow her, he buys a poison and takes it at the grave. When Julieta wakes up and sees the corpse of her lover, she takes her husband’s dagger and plunges it into her heart.
That is, broadly speaking, the story that Shakespeare presents to us in his work. However, there are clear antecedents of it in texts prior to that of the English playwright, as we will see below.
The other versions of the legend
Actually, We can trace the story of Romeo and Juliet back to ancient Greek times, which gives us a clue about the lack of authenticity of the events it narrates. In the prologue of the edition of Romeo and Juliet from the Austral collection (Espasa publishing house), Ángel-Luis Pujante comments that The Ephesians by Xenophon presents a similar argument: the protagonist of this story, to escape from a man who desires her, takes a narcotic that makes her appear dead. The drug takes effect and the girl returns to the arms of her lover.
Perhaps it is one of the few versions that has a happy ending. Already in modern times, we find the story of Mariotto and Gianozza of Siena, narrated by Masuccio Salernitano in his work Cinquante Novelle (1476) The plot is extraordinarily similar to that of William Shakespeare: young people who love each other are secretly married by a friar, since their families are opposed to the marriage. Mariotto, who has killed a man, must flee the city. To avoid an imposed marriage, young Gianozza takes a false potion that will make her appear dead. After being deposited in her tomb, the friar unearths her, and Gianozza goes to meet her lover. But he, having learned of the death of his wife, has returned to Siena to cry at his grave. Mariotto is quickly arrested and executed.
As you can see, the similarity of the story is incredible. Much more similar is that of Giulietta and Romeo by Luigi da Porto, written in 1524 and whose title is, in itself, quite explicit. Da Porto introduces some innovations in the story, such as the name of the rival families, which he draws directly from the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri Later, Matteo Bandello would write his version, also titled Romeo and Giulietta (here, curiously, with the order of the names already reversed), which will see the light of day in 1554. The story, the same. In 1562, the narrative becomes a poem by Arthur Brooke (possibly the direct source of William Shakespeare), but he will also have time to pass through Spain, where Lope de Vega himself will write his own version of the story, Castelvines and Monteses (1647).
As we can see, the route of Romeo and Juliet It is long. For our current mentality, this succession of works with the same plot is blatant plagiarism; but it was not like that for the time. The concept of “plagiarism” is relatively modern, and before the 19th century, authors and artists “copied” each other without any problem. Thus, they took ideas from others, reworked them and introduced new elements, more in line with the reality of the public that was going to enjoy the work or, simply, more in line with the author’s tastes.
Dante’s Cappelletti and Montecchi
This list of works based on the story of Romeo and Juliet helps us understand that Shakespeare did not start from scratch, but it undoubtedly does not clarify at all the enigma of whether Romeo and Juliet really existed. Perhaps the first authors were based on real people?
We have already said that Luigi da Porto takes the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri the names of the rival families of the story. Indeed; in Canto VI of Purgatory The Cappelletti and Montecchi appear named. The mention is very brief and no further information is given about it. Who were these families? Why does Dante cite them in his Purgatorio? Did they really exist?
It seems that the Cappelletti were a family originally from Cremona and belonged to the Ghibellines, the political faction of Dante’s time that supported the Holy Roman Emperor in his dispute with the Pontificate On the other hand, the Montecchi would come from Verona and would be Guelfs, that is, they would give their political support to the Pope. This would, therefore, be one of the possible explanations for the rivalry between both families. But there is one detail that does not quite add up: of the two, only one of the families was from Verona, the city where the tragedy takes place. Perhaps Luigi da Porto, upon seeing both names mentioned in the same sentence, assumed that they resided in the same locality?
The enigmatic “Posada del Cappello”
Now we must move to the 18th century, a time when Europeans of good family took part in what was known as the “Grand Tour”, which was nothing more than a tour of the most interesting places in Italy. The trip was very popular among Romantic artists (Goethe was one of their most excited travelers), and attracted crowds of restless young people to the most important and beautiful cities in Italy. Verona, of course, was one of them.
Among Grand Tour travelers Word began to spread that a house in the city, known as Posada del Cappello, had been the home of the famous Juliet The rumor was probably based on the name of the house, “Cappello”, in which travelers wanted to see an echo of the surname “Capulet”, the family to which Juliet had belonged according to Shakespeare and Da Porto, among others. So, little by little, the inn began to fill with passionate romantics who wanted to spend the night in the house “where Juliet had lived.”
But was that house actually the home of the Capulets? Did the name of the inn have any connection with the surname of the Shakespearean heroine? Well, actually… no. The inn was named after the family that ran it, the Cappellos, and has been documented since the 14th century. These Cappellos are not the Cappelletti that Dante cites nor did they have anything to do with them. However, the fame that “Juliet’s House” had acquired during the 18th century continued during the following century and reached the doors of the 20th, to the point that, in 1905, the Verona City Council bought the building. In 1973, and after a series of renovations (in which its Gothic style was “enhanced”), Verona opened “Juliet’s House” to the general public.
A neverending story
Therefore, if we stick to the (scarce) historical documentation that we have, we have to conclude that no, that Romeo and Juliet never existed, and that their respective families (the Capulets and the Montagues) are confusingly based on two families cited by Dante. and of which hardly anything is known.
The love story of young people has its roots in an ancient tradition of medieval stories, which were passed from word to mouth until, finally, they were put into writing by the different authors we have mentioned above. And the story did not die with William Shakespeare, since we find multiple versions for film and even musicals and operas, which only broaden the horizons of the famous story. A tragic story; beautiful, if you like, but it was never real.
