I'll see if I can help you with your question concerning Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Act 2.1. The most important event in this scene is one that isn't actually mentioned. A reader, rather than a viewer who is watching the play, may not even realize the event occurs until the beginning of the next scene. Plus, your understanding of the scene may depend on what version you're reading from. You mention that you read the play in the "original" and the "modern" versions, so I'll quote the "original" from a book that contains both, the Barron's version:
Scene 2
Capulet's Orchard. Enter Romeo
That's your clue, your evidence. In Act 2.1 when Romeo speaks his two lines:
Can I go forward when my heart is here?
Turn back, dull earth, and find thy centre out.
he is standing in a lane (street) by the wall of the Capulet orchard. He then disappears from the sight of his friends as they arrive. When they leave and scene one ends and scene two begins, Romeo is now in the orchard. Since his friends would not have been on Capulet property yelling and making jokes as they were, we can infer where Romeo goes when he disappears, and where he goes is the most important event of Act 2.1: he jumps the wall and goes into the Capulet's orchard. Juliet comes out on her balcony and we have the famous balcony scene.
Romeo tells himself, figuratively, to "turn back" and jumps the wall. If he walks away we have no romance, no play, no tragedy.
It's difficult to know this when you're only reading the play. You would have understood it if you were watching actors perform the play. I hope this helps.
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