“There is no world without Verona walls”: The City in Romeo and Juliet

Youth and Privacy in <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>

“…In Romeo, writes Naomi Liebler, 'we hear much about walls -and about walls within walls: Verona's many small enclosures and little fortresses ("two households") subdivide and thus weaken the city'. 40 Verona, Liebler contends, implodes: its walls signify separateness and divisiveness; violence and disorder underlie the very structure of the city, and Romeo and Juliet are fatally ensnared in that structure. It seems to me, though, that they make use of that very divisiveness, exploring a sense of interiority from within the segregated spaces the play carves out.…”