Our new candle is Romeo and Juliet and I’m not over-reaching when I say that you will fall in love with the smell of this candle, it is utterly gorgeous!
Wonderful vintage tuberose, not too flowery or sweet, with enough personality to blend harmoniously with the fruity notes of cassis along with fig, carnation and amber in supporting roles. This is an old fashioned fragrance with a floral-fruity richness that matches perfectly with a play that is all about dualities. Two young lovers, two warring families, the dichotomy between comedy and tragedy and the light and dark references throughout, Romeo and Juliet is jam-packed with doubleness. Shakespeare was so clever!
That movement between comedy and tragedy served to heighten tension for the audience and perhaps this, and the theme of young love, is why it’s such a captivating tale. Even today, it’s still going strong and has been pretty much adapted for every entertainment genre - stage, screen, opera, ballet.
And even if you haven’t read the play, or you’re not a fan of Shakespeare, I imagine everyone can tell you that it is set in Verona, where the Montagues and Capulets are at odds and that two youngsters from each of those families falls in love. And then there’s the death bits. Romeo poisons himself thinking Juliet is dead, she wakes and realising her Romeo is dead, stabs herself. Told you it was tragic.
The Prince of Verona summed it up nicely at the end of the play, “for never was a story of more woe/Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”
So, one of the themes of the play is light and dark - pretty appropriate for a candle! Both Romeo and Juliet see each other as light. Juliet describing Romeo as “day in night” and “whiter than the snow upon a raven’s back”. Romeo, early on on the play, describes Juliet as “The all seeing sun ne'er saw her match since first the world begun.”
And so our new candle, for me, is a literal expression of Romeo and Juliet in that it is a provider of light but also, it has the ‘feel’ of Italy, of romance (the floral notes), of youth (the fruity notes), of bygone times (fig and amber) and of complexity. Ahem, it would be a tragedy not to own one :)
