What did the biers look like in Romeo and Juliet??

Question

The bier where Juliet was put where Romeo was supossed to get her. They both died there.

What i need is a picture/ description so i can replicate it.

Could i use a shoe box and "stone spray" it?

all ideas appreciated.

Answer 1

A "bier" has, traditionally, been a platform on which a corpse is placed before burial; and the platform was also used to transport the body to its resting place. In the case of ancient funereal cremation, the bier was also the name of the wooden structure or pyre, on which the body was placed for burning.

Because of its associations with both transporation and cremation, it's likely that most biers would have been made out of wood, rather than stone; although it was common to cover the structure with cloth as depicted in the illustration provided by the first poster. Incidentally, the bier depicted there precedes those that would have been used at the time in which Romeo and Juliet is set by a few centuries - the illumination is of a 12th-13th century bier, and Romeo and Juliet is set in the 16th century.

If you want to make a historically accurate model of a "bier," you could use the shoebox lid, and paint it like wood; place it on the inverted shoebox, painted like wood (or stone, if you must); and perhaps, drape cloth over the lid part to represent a burial shroud or decorative cloth.

Answer 2

Here you go, with help from Google Images : "Contemplating the bier" : http://campus.udayton.edu/mary/images/icons/bier.jpg