The symbolic space of Romeo and Juliet is organized in concentric circles (Capulet’s household, the orchard, Juliet’s bedchamber), the centre of which is Juliet’s body, destined to be invested by male desire, figured as Romeo’s ceaseless roaming. The tension between love and patriarchy evolves two conflicting forms of stage space, one open and modelled on the sexual norm of the love encounter, the other closed and anti sexual. As patriarchy triumphs over love, the journey of the lovers takes them from the circle of Juliet’s ‘no-thing’ to the nothing of the grave’s stone circle, while loss is eventually negated by the incantation rising from the ‘Wooden O’.