Some what above the middle of the front of the building, or. and it is very little used in any other country that I could perceive in my travels, saving only in Venice and other Italian Cities. I noted another thing in these Venetian Palaces. Italy, which figures prominently in many of Shakespeare's plays, was a source of especial architectural fascination for Coryat, even without the word 'balcone' to describe what he saw: His whopper of a title, Coryat's Crudities: Hastily Gobled Up in Five Moneths Travells in France, Savoy, Italy, Rhetia Commonly Called the Grisons Country, Helvetia Alias Switzerland, Some Parts of High Germany and the Netherlands: Newly Digested in the Hungry Aire of Odcombe in the County of Somerset, and Now Dispersed to the Nourishment of the Travelling Members of this Kingdome, indicates how exotic and unknown he presumed the nations he visited were to his English readers. In 1611, more than a decade and a half after Romeo and Juliet was first performed, an Englishman named Tom Coryat published an account of the tour of the Continent he undertook in 1608. Even the concept of a balcony was (literally) foreign to Shakespeare's British contemporaries. But tracing the history of how the balcony scene evolved over the past four centuries reveals that even when it comes to Shakespeare, audiences may care less about the original text than about adaptations and revisions that appeal to the sensibilities of the current era.ĭear Therapist: My Friends Stopped Talking to Me After My Divorce Lori GottliebĪccording to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest known use in English of the word 'balcone' (as it was then spelled) didn’t occur until 1618, two years after Shakespeare died. What is more complicated is understanding how a non-existent balcony has become so indelibly associated with Romeo and Juliet, that today it’s difficult to imagine the play without it. This strange fact-the lack of a balcony in Romeo and Juliet-can easily be verified by anyone who goes back and reads Shakespeare's play, something few have done since high school. Not only was there no balcony in Romeo and Juliet, there was no balcony in all of Shakespeare's England. In fact, Shakespeare didn't know what a balcony was.

The word 'balcony' never appears in Shakespeare's play.

There's only one problem: There is no balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet. Colloquially known as 'the balcony scene,' it contains Romeo and Juliet's most quoted lines, which are so closely associated with the balcony that they're frequently repeated (often incorrectly and in a hammy style) by non-actors who seize upon any real-life balcony, porch, landing, or veranda to reenact the moment. It's perhaps the most famous scene in all of English literature: Juliet stands on her balcony with Romeo in the garden below, star-crossed lovers meeting by moonlight.

Romeo and juliet balcony script