"Art Thou Gone So?"

For years favorite tourist attractions of the mellow old city of Verona have been an ancient house and a tomb which local guides stoutly insist are the home and the last resting place of Juliet Capulet. In 1937 the success enjoyed by these relics of Shakespeare's famed heroine became too much for the town fathers of Vicenza, a town 30 miles east of Verona. Two ancient castles stood in likely juxtaposition on Vicenza's hills and the town fathers began beckoning the tourist trade with tales that Romeo and Juliet spent their romantic summers there.

Vicenza's Juliet castle was turned into a tavern complete with medieval trappings and frescoes illustrating the great love story. A long-faced waiter, who obligingly changed his name from Mario to Romeo, served sentimental vacationists with specially prepared Scaloppe alla Giulietta e Romeo in the dining room. When supper was done, the tourists were led in awe to an upstairs bedroom to gape at Capulet relics that included, said the guides, the very bed in which Juliet had slept. Neither Vicenza nor the tourists cared in the slightest that Verona's tourist bureau stoutly denied the authenticity of both the castle and the bed.

Last week a group of seven merry Italian vacationists dropped in at Juliet's castle and persuaded Innkeeper Enrico Piazza to join them in an evening of cards and dining well washed with the white Soave wine of Verona. The innkeeper accepted with a will, romped and drank with the visitors until long after closing time. At last his guests drove off in two cars and a small truck, and Piazza set about locking up the tavern. When he got to Juliet's room, a cold chill gripped his heart. Gone were the bedstead, the wardrobe and the other Capulet relics. In their place, stuck firmly to the wall, was a note written on parchment in purest 13th century Italian. "I prefer beloved Verona to this creepy castle," it read. And it was signed Giulietta.

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