Answered by Dr Sophie Duncan, research fellow at the University of Oxford and author of Searching for Juliet (Hachette, 2023)
Contrary to popular belief, does not appear to her future lover on a balcony. Rather, in the playwright’s original text, she regales him from a window. That’s because balconies as we know them today did not exist in 16th-century England, when Shakespeare was making his name. It was not until 1611 that the concept of a balcony was first introduced to England, through a travel guide to Italy and France written by Thomas Coryat in which he described little terraces protruding from buildings.
