Games with mirrors. Romeo and Juliet between history and novel in Verona during the 18th century (part two)

• Main Author: Fausta Piccoli
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Studi Veronesi 2017-11-01
• Series: Studi Veronesi
• Subjects: Verona; William Shakespeare; Romeo e Giulietta; Tomba di Giulietta; Michael Rijkloff van Goens; John Yorke
• Online Access: http://www.veronastoria.it/ojs/index.php/StVer/article/view/77
• ISSN: 2531-9949; 2532-0173

During the first half of the 18th century the memory of the story of Romeo and Juliet was still alive in Verona, on the basis of the Istoria di Verona written by Girolamo Dalla Corte. Shakespeare’s tragedy was unknown. In the second half of the 18th century, Romeo and Juliet found favorable reception mainly in England, then in Germany and France and, through the mediation of the latter, in Italy. Through the analysis of English, German, French and Italian texts and documents, this essay provides a comprehensive survey of Romeo’s and Juliet’s Eighteenth-century circulation, in the Shakespearean version, in its translations and in many adaptations, very different from each other, composed by dramatists of various nationalities. In this complex and varied background, there are no Veronese sources between the Sixties and Eighties. Still, the correspondence between Michael Rijkloff van Goens and Melchiorre Cesarotti reveals how the memory of the two lovers was still alive in their “hometown”; while an elegy written in 1779 by nobleman John Yorke, in Verona during his “Grand Tour”, attests of the earliest Shakespearean pilgrimage to Juliet’s tomb, thirty years before the famous words of Madame de Staël, George Byron and Valery. Yorke’s verses disclose the existence of an oral tradition, forgotten by Veronese written sources, and the existence of tour guides, travelers, and locals who continued to talk about Juliet and visit her tomb.