Romeo and Juliet

Verona, Italy

Many of the scenes take place in the streets of Verona, where the young men of the Capulet and Montague families hang out and get into fights with one another. Within Verona, Romeo and Juliet have very different worlds. Romeo is always seen in the streets, never in his own house. He is part of a freewheeling and masculine world. Juliet, in contrast, is very much a sheltered daughter, almost never allowed outside the walls of her father’s house. Romeo must invade that world in order to meet Juliet. The only neutral place where Romeo and Juliet’s worlds overlap is at Friar Laurence’s church. This seems to be the only place Juliet is allowed to go outside of her home, (for purposes of confessing sins…presumably not to commit them). Friar Laurence is Romeo’s confessor as well. Verona, then, is a setting with a religious – specifically Catholic – dimension.

Theatrical and film interpretations of the play have reset the play in many different cities, from 1950’s New York City divided by ethnic tensions, to the futuristic "Verona Beach" of Baz Luhrmann’s film version of Romeo + Juliet. What most interpretations keep is the sense of a hot climate that provokes the passions, something Benvolio refers to directly when he says, "For, now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring" (3.1.4).