43. We believe what the cinema wants us to believe

PHOTO: Castles of Romeo & Juliet view from the town of Montecchio Maggiore, in the province of Vicenza on the way to Verona. Because of their vicinity, throughout the ages the Rulers of the Castles were of the same noble family. Could Romeo and Juliet have been cousins?

There is a simple road sign 

that leads to the castles

Why did Shakespeare Write

‘Romeo and Juliet’ if They didn’t Exist?

First published by Milton Keynes U:K: Writers’ Website 2004

To say that Romeo and Juliet never existed is to trample on the dreams of those who believe there is such a thing as real love; and if real love did not exist, the consequence would be immense. A not indifferent number of women’s magazine and publishing houses would pull down their shutters and if you take romance from the screen you leave a void to be filled by what? Perhaps literature, poetry and the whole world of art may not quite come to a full stop but certainly scrape near it they would.

Close up of one of the castles

Yet, if one is to be logical about it all, that is the plain truth: Romeo and Juliet never did exist; at least not in Verona as Metro Golden Mayer would lead us to believe with their production filmed in 1935 in a Verona which thanks to Antonio Avena, the then Officer in charge of Museums and Works of Art, restored and reinvented the necessary buildings just for the occasion and which has since brought hordes of devotees to the area consecrating it as the original home and tomb of Juliet. Indeed the Cinema has been capable of making us believe this is so. But, of course nothing could be further from the truth since Juliet’s home and all the rest are a perfect invention of the innovative Council Officer aiding and abetting Golden Mayer.

Entrance to Romeo's castle

So I return to my original cogitation, why did Shakespeare write “Romeo and Juliet” if they did not exist? A more recent film, “Shakespeare in Love” has tried to answer this question leading us to believe it was all due to a personal matter between Shakespeare and the Lady in question, which of course is quite imaginative but hardly realistic as there is no proof of this relationship as such. This is but another attempt by the Cinema to make us believe what they want us to. Besides it would mean diminishing Shakespeare’s unique greatness to restrict his power of creativity to a mere matter of personal emotion. Shakespeare must have believed that these lovers in reality existed- such powerful rendering of fresh and ground-breaking expressions could not have been penned by him if he had any doubt that they were not real. To think otherwise would be to do Shakespeare a disservice.

By all means let those, who would otherwise feel cheated by time and cannot bear to part with this 500 years old tradition of the lovers origin, make their pilgrimage to Verona; but given a little more thought, they'll find Shakespeare is on my side. One thing that Shakespeare always assures us is that he never accepted the official account of any event since those who write history; often write what they would like to be believed, not what actually is. Julius Caesar was considered a powerful Roman Emperor, yet Shakespeare portrayed him as someone afraid of drowning and of dreams. In ‘Troilus and Cressida’, the once admired Greek heroes become subject to drunkenness and idleness. Therefore any play regarding true events, Shakespeare searched for the truth that lay far beyond what was written officially and he scraped away all the layers of pretence until he touched the heart of the matter, and transformed the information into the miracles that we know today, which I suspect are far more truthful than any account left to posterity. ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is no exception, Shakespeare sought the truth in this play as much as in any other and left small clues for us to decipher as to the events, surroundings and personages.

What is known is that Shakespeare based his play on a 3,000 lines poem by Authur Brooke (1562) who had translated it from the French Pierre Boiastuau (1559) who in turn had translated it from a story by the Italian Matteo Bandello (1554) who had based it on a story, but in a more sombre key, by the Vicentine Luigi Da Porto which appeared posthumously in 1531. Should you walk down the street called Via Porti in Vicenza, where the writer lived, you will see a large plague dedicated to Luigi Da Porto who wrote: Hystorie Nouellamente Ritrouata di Due Nobili Amanti which from the Old Italian is untranslatable but basically it means that it is the narrative remake of the history of two noble lovers.

Knowing where Shakespeare got his sources from does not solve the problem of the story bearing any truth on reality. At this point would it not be a let down to discover that the story was only fictitious and not historical? Somehow characters and events based on real life seem to have greater dimensions, part of our own heritage, people who breathed the same air as we petty mortals do- and it seems that Shakespeare would not have it otherwise if we remember that he had always based his works on already existing material. The genius of Shakespeare lies heavily on the fact that nothing he created was original- There’s a consoling thought, there’s hope for us unpublished writers yet!

Considering the facts all point to Luigi Da Porto as the writer who first penned the history, as he himself called it, of Romeo and Juliet; it is there that lies the hope of finding the real identity of the lovers or at least their existence. But, who was Luigi Da Porto? Certainly not only a writer. First and foremost he was a soldier who fought during the war of Cambrai where he was wounded and disfigured causing him to retire to Montorso, from whose windows he could see the two castles situated in Montecchio Maggiore built within 300 yards of each other and can be dated back to the 11th Century. The wars that raged at the start of the 1500s sees The Republic of Venice which had taken possession of the castles for over a century, in a conflict against the Cambrai Legue- a coalition of the Imperial and the Papal Forces. When it became clear the Cambrai League was on the verge of victory, the Venetian army of which Da Porto was a soldier had to set fire to the castles in order to prevent the enemy from taking possession and using them as fortresses.

The reason I have mentioned the above conflict is not just out of general interest but because such wars play a fundamental part in the names given to the families of the two lovers. However the names, in Italian, Cappelletti and Montecchi are not names that appertain to noble families either in Verona or Vicenza where the castles of Montecchio Maggiore are situated. A mention of these names can be found in Dante’s Purgatory who refers to the noble families of Montecchi, in Lombardy, as being the supporters of the Imperial Forces known as the Ghibellines and the Cappelleti, from Cremona, appertaining to the Papal Forces known as the Guelph, who incidentally were the ancestors of the British Royal Family, as it was pointed out to me by an English dictionary. Curiously, or perhaps thanks to the two lovers, by the time Da Porto writes his history, the Imperial and Papal Forces are no longer against one another but have formed the Cambria alliance against The Venetian Republic.

But why set the play in Verona when neither of the two families came from that city; and here it is not entirely fair to blame Golden Mayer for setting Romeo and Juliet in Verona, after all so did Da Porto and all others who came after him. Why didn’t Da Porto set the play in Romeo’s family town in Lombardy or Giulietta Cappelletti’s town in Cremona or why not even south of Rome to where Masuccio Salernitano came from? And pray what has the gentleman in question to do with the whole thing? Quite a lot since he wrote the first version where the theme of apparent death is used as a plot form of two lovers who end tragically because their families belonged to feuding factions. Households sustaining The Papal versus the Imperial Forces abounded over all the territory, not just in the north: but of course the family names were different. Masuccio (1410-1480) used typical southern names as Mariotto and Ganozza for his protagonists whom fortunately Da Porto changed into Giulietta and Romeo.

 Juliet's window

Am I therefore suggesting that Romeo and Juliet originated from the south, beyond Rome? Not at all. What appears to have happened is that since feuding families of diverging factions were commonplace, it is more the rule rather than the exception that the young heirs of such families were forbidden to intermarry and occasions arose that such youths rebelled against parental choice of marriage. Masuccio must have been a witness to such events and fleshed his tale with commonplace names so as to emphasize the diffusion of these happenings. However it is Luigi Da Porto who pens the first complete version on which all others including Shakespeare base their renderings.

Da Porto sets the events in Verona during the reign of Bartolomeo della Scala in 1301 and names Romeo’s family the Montecchi and Giulietta’s the Cappelletti encapsulating the two political factions mentioned earlier. But why those names when there were other feuding families to choose from? The English version of Montague has the same pronunciation as the Italian Montecchio, which refers to the name of the castles in Montecchio Maggiore and not to the family name. Insignificant as it may appear, this is one of the clues that Shakespeare leaves lying around for us to decipher, in other words Romeo is the Romeo from Montecchio. So much for the names, and now again I question, why Verona? Considering that the town Montecchio, is in the province of Vicenza, on the way to Verona and that the Prince of Verona was also to become, a few years later, the Ruler of the Castles in Montecchio; in fact the Lord of Verona is no other than the embodiment of the Scalgiero reign (the adjective of Scala) which was shortly to include Venice and Florence; therefore, it is no wonder that one speaks of a town that has some resonance and is the hometown of the Prince who also possessed the castle in Montecchio, Vicenza. Therefore Verona becomes a point of reference rather than Vicenza which is obscure.

In reading Shakespeare’s version, something strikes as strange- the description of the scenery is alien to a Veronese background which is unlike Shakespeare since in his plays, he could, without actually seeing them, paint Milan, Mantua, Padua and Venice as a real native. But for some reason, Verona escapes him or at least the surroundings of the rival castles never seem clear in his eyes. The only clue given is that “The orchard walls are high and hard to climb,” which excludes the residence in Verona as there does not seem to be an orchard anywhere in the vicinity. While the “stony limits” that “cannot hold love out”, is a more fitting description of a strong fortress than a city residence. The lack of description is, at a calculated guess, due to the fact that the castles did not exist in Verona, an area of which Shakespeare must have had some knowledge. Neither was Da Porto of any help since he did nothing to give the castles identifiable surroundings and one wonders, why. In effect was Luigi Da Porto trying to masquerade the real identity of the lovers? The plausible explanation is that Da Porto knew the identity of the lovers but as the penalty for disclosure which denoted compliance of such, was death, not only are the names fictitious but so are the surroundings except for the above quotations. But if we take away the names and transplant the action from Verona to Montecchio, what was taking place in the castles during the period that Da Porto sets his tale are some of the most atrocious events known in history- namely the Inquisition. At the turn of the 14th Century the Inquisition (Papal Forces) condemned the Lords of the Castles in Montecchio for heresy. Throughout the centuries both Castles were occupied by members of one family and with the death of the pleasure seeking Cavaliers, the Pilei family, who at that time were the Lords of the Castles, becomes extinct. At this point there is a struggle by the Lay Forces against the Papal Forces for possession of the Castles until the Scaligera Lords from Verona take over. The ground is fertile for Da Porto, condemned to his room by war injuries to be spurred to set down the events of what had occurred two hundred years earlier, and little matters if he cheats and steals the narcotic from Salerno to send Juliet to sleep- everyone will just think he is retelling a legend. But the depth of darkness with which Da Porto tells the story fools no-one that not all is imagined. Besides why would a soldier of fierce courage suddenly turn feeble and write tales without any bearing on the truth- if this were so then madness had seized his brain which was not the case.

But if Da Porto will not give anything away to make it possible to identify the families involved, others will have to draw their own conclusions as Golden Mayer did by setting Juliet’s house in Verona which as it happens was a Scaligera residence, the same Lords that were in possession of the castles in Montecchio in 1311. This does not mean that Juliet belonged to the Scala nobility. It must be remembered that the 11 years preceding the period of the Scaligero reign there is a violent struggle for power between the Inquisition (Papal Forces-Juliet’s family) and the Lay Forces-Romeo’s family who had confiscated the Castles in spite of attempts from the Papal Forces to regain them. The Scala family were a neutral family given leave to take possession by the Lord of Verona as a consequence of the conflict between the two factions. If we take this premise as good the events that led to the writing of Da Porto’s history must have taken place as indeed he claims, in the war-torn period just before the Scaligero reign which in Montecchio began in 1311.

However, there is another option: the probability that Luigi Da Porto knew the lovers personally but in order to disguise their identity located them in another time and place. Luigi Da Porto died in 1529 and his Romeo and Juliet appeared posthumously in 1531, so it would not be too big a guess that he compiled the work not long before his death and certainly after he was injured, which brings me to ask, what was going on in the Castles from 1510 to 1530? In 1404 The Republic of Venice was formed and in its bid for expansion occupied, quite bloodlessly the castles in Montecchio, replacing the Visconti family who by that time had succeeded the Veronese Scala family. Round about 1465 the Renaissance painter from the school of Montagna, Giovanni Buonconsiglio was born in Montecchio. His father was the blacksmith at court and consequently Giovanni was well known by the nobility, not only for his art but through personal confidences. The artist moves to Venice, Verona and the whole of the Northern area continuously due to the painting of murals and so does his family. We know he has a son because officially, his son, Vitruvio, in 1523 is condemned in his absence to six years exile for brawl and grievous bodily harm. Passing sentence in contumacia as the records show, meaning that the accused was tried in his absence, is not an every day occurrence and it is this detail peculiar to Romeo too that made me suspect that there was some link between this sentence and that of Romeo’s- a detail not to be passed over lightly. On the other hand it could well be a coincidence that this young man was for Da Porto the incarnation of Romeo- were it not for his name- Buonconsiglio.

Juliet's castle where she says
no stony wall can keep love out

When Shakespeare delivers his best and most important work, he does so in rhyme and not in narrative. In the same balcony scene from where I have quoted the description of the Castle, Juliet asks the identity of this man concealed by night who stumbles on her counsel. And when she asks him how he found this place: the castles in Montecchio, are constructed on high boulders of rock and are not within easy reach; again here is another clue that this cannot possibly be the stately house in Verona but the Castles in Montecchio, he tells her that love had lent him counsel. In a short, crucial scene written in verse the word counsel appears twice and as I don’t recall seeing it elsewhere makes me think it cannot possibly be a coincidence, because Shakespeare did not believe in coincidences and neither was he short of words- he could easily have replaced the word counsel by one even more effective. My explanation is that the word counsel which translated into Italian is nothing less than Buonconsiglio the surname of Vitruvio, the Renaissance painter’s son who was exiled for brawl and grievous bodily harm in 1523 is a clue to the identity of Romeo. It is near certain that Da Porto and Vitruvio knew each other and as it was inadmissible that a commoner sought the hand of a noble lady who resided at the Castle, which in spite of the fires, the private quarters at the time were inhabited by the victorious Cambria League (an alliance between the Papal and Lay Forces): Romeo was therefore an enemy because his father had been the court painter of the previous Rulers of the Castle whom Da Porto in the defeated Venetian Army had defended. This explains also why the castles are not two but one, since the castle is possessed by the Lord of one family, therefore the castle of Romeo does not exist and never has.

But enough of options and intrigue; given the facts it is no longer a question of whether Romeo and Juliet existed, but which Romeo and Juliet inspired Da Porto to write about love, passion, romance and tragedy which seem to blend perfectly with Italy. Imagine a ‘Romeo and Juliet’ based in Alaska or any other country that is not Italy, somehow it would not be the same. Obviously, Shakespeare also thought Italy was the inevitable choice for a love drama. However, ironically as it may seem, it took the ingenuity of an Englishman to articulate the passions of the Italian lovers in such a way as to make them immortally memorable. For most people the original Italian writers of this tragedy have long been lost in oblivion.

And now, a final word for those who want to tamper with Shakespeare. Try as I must, the only affinity with the truth I am able to find in films such as “Shakespeare in Love” is that a new romance may have trigged off the writing of a love story, as the execution of Essex may have trigged off the writing of Hamlet- but that is all. I may not have the prerogative that great scholars have, nevertheless, I refuse to slide over those, who in order to obtain honour, fame and glory, but mostly make money- speculate on and distort the greatness of William Shakespeare and make us believe what they want us to believe.

© 2007 Eva Ulian – The best of the worst

Permission is granted to make limited use of articles in

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 By Eva Ulian: Impressionist Painter- Writer

http://evaulian-thebestoftheworst.blogspot.com/

Historical Summary

1008 Papal Forces – The castle is constructed by the Lords of Montecchio, namely Bongiudei
feudatories of the Bishop of Vicenza

1200s Speronella Bongiudei marries Uguccione Pileo and the castle (the two buildings are
considered a single complex) is given in dowry

1200+ Imperial Forces: Ezzelini and Federico II of Sweeden take the weaken Pilei Lords

1243 Imperial Forces: The castle is destroyed by Ezzelino III with the Pilei Lords

1259 Imperial Forces: Death of Ezzelino

1301 Papal Forces: The Inquisition condemn the remaining Pilei Lords

1301-11 A struggle between the Lay Forces against the Church Forces endures.
Luigi Da Porto sets his history of Romeo and Juliet in this period

1311 The Lords of Verona, Scala, take over the area including Florence and Venice- The Scaligero Reign begins

1387 Giangaleazzo Visconti in alliance with Padua defeat Antonio della Scala for the possession of the castle

1404 The Republic of Venice exiles the Visconti Lords and take possession of the castle

1510 The Papal and Imperial coalition known as The Cambria League defeat The Republic of
Venice and take possession of the castles which have been burned by the Venetian Republic

1510-1529 Luigi Da Porto who fought for The Republic of Venice retires wounded to Montorso,
a few kilometres from the castles and writes his history.

1600s The State of Veneto (Consists of the main cities in the North) lease the castle to The
Municipality of Montecchio Maggiore

1742 The Municipality of Montecchio Maggiore purchase the castle for the sum of 200 ducati