1 Juliet – From the Script
‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy.
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet.
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo called,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name, which is no part of thee
Take all myself.
Romeo and Juliet, 2.2.
2 Juliet – At the Festival
Romeo and Juliet, or “R and J” as it is known in theatre circles, made its Utah Shakespeare Festival debut in the tumultuous summer of 1968. Directed by Fred Adams, the festival production coincided with the release of Franco Zeffirelli’s famous film version of the story. Then in its seventh year, the Festival had already produced both Hamlet and The Merchant of Venice twice before they attempted their first production of Romeo and Juliet. Still performing on a temporary stage built each summer on the university’s upper campus, Festival lore credits that production with moving the festival toward a more permanent home when the actress playing Juliet refused to climb to the balcony on the makeshift stage because it wobbled. Throughout the 1970s, the festival spent $250,000 to construct the Adams Memorial Shakespearean Theatre, an Elizabethan-style, open-air performance space modeled after Shakespeare’s own Globe Theatre in London.
3 Juliet – Artist: A. Clayton Robbins
A Clayton Robbins was born in Alberta, Canada in 1919 but lived in Utah most of his life until his death in 2010. Though he studied under very talented mentors at the University of Utah and was involved in fine art most of his life, it wasn’t until after he retired that he truly pursued it as a full-time profession. The last 30 years of his life was devoted almost exclusively to the creation of bronze sculpture. Many of the sculptures in the Pederson Shakespeare Character Garden were created by Robbins or were fashioned on his design.
The Juliet pictured in this statue was modeled after the features of Dorcas Elizabeth Adams, daughter of Festival co-founders, Fred C. and Barbara G. Adams.