"Silencing the Natural Body: Notes on the Monumental Body in Romeo and Juliet"

The essay examines the discursive strategies inherent in the conception and representation of death in Romeo and Juliet as a site of conflict. Eventually assumed as glamorous civic icons of peace, the natural bodies of the two lovers are transfigured into monumental bodies that rewrite their story. Compared to the novella tradition, mention of their tomb is revelatory of a communal appropriation of their bodies that foregrounds separateness, rather than unity, and economic and political interest, rather than familial memory. The effacement of their individuality through their civic immortalization does not come unexpected once a discursive undercurrent pivoting on the grave/monument opposition and the bed-bier metonymy is related to the process of hybridization the bedroom and the tomb undergo. A peculiar use of stage properties contributes to pointing out the relevance of dramaturgy as a practice of space construction underlying the mutual permeability of the private and the public and the potentially tragic dimension of liminal spheres.