So what really caused the Montague-Capulet feud that made so much trouble for a couple of teens in love?
Chicago Shakespearean actor and director David Blixt, 34, provides a backstory, play battles, a duel, a violent horse race, kidnappings and forbidden love in his swashbuckling debut novel The Master of Verona.
The story is set in 14th century Italy, and revolves around Francesco "Cangrande" della Scala, prince of Verona. A charismatic, ruthless and ambitious leader, Cangrande wins the service of the idealistic young Pietro Alaghieri.
The story is told mainly from Pietro's point of view, as he tries to please two fathers - Cangrande and Pietro's real father, the poet Dante, whose Divine Comedy is the talk of Europe. Pietro's life is repeatedly at risk as he becomes entangled in conspiracies involving Cangrande's heir. Along the way, Pietro encounters both historical figures and characters from Shakespeare's plays, including the battling couple Kate and Petruchio, a Jew named Shalakh, Romeo's friend Mercutio as a gifted child, and two best friends named Montecchio and Capulletto, who become bitter enemies.
Blixt, who already has written and sold a sequel to The Master of Verona, and is writing a third installment, spoke to the Sun-Times recently.
Q. Did you always like Shakespeare?
A. I hated Shakespeare. They made me read "Julius Caesar" in the seventh grade, and I didn't care. It was through performing Shakespeare that I understood why he's still around. It's meant to be performed. I always tell students if you ever have trouble understanding it, read it outloud.
Q. So the idea for this book came from "Romeo & Juliet"?
A. It did. The first time I was asked to direct the show was nine years ago. I sat down to cut the script, because you can't have a three-and-a-half-hour show. At the very end, after everybody has died, there was a line that didn't make any sense to me. The prince welcomes Montague into the tomb, where all the bodies are. Montague responds, "Alas, my liege, my wife is dead tonight. Grief of my son's exile hath stopped her breath." And I said to myself, "Why does Lady Montague get the last death? Why do we care?" A death at the end of a show is symbolic of something, especially death offstage. The only thing that made sent to me is that if her death symbolized the end of the feud, she was the cause of the feud. She was supposed to marry Lord Capulet and she ran off with Lord Montague instead!
Q. So that led you to write the novel?
A. When I started researching the play, I researched the city and I discovered that Dante was in Verona, Giotto was in Verona, Petrarch was in Verona and the Renaissance technically begins in Verona with Petrarch finding letters of Cicero. So with all of that in mind I was going to write a short little story about two friends falling out over a girl. It blossomed into something else completely and became the subplot of the book.
Q. What did you know about Dante before you started?
A. Absolutely nothing. I would have bet money against reading The Divine Comedy at any other point in my life. It was the Harry Potter of its day. Everyone was insane for this story. They were singing it and reading it and passing it around and having it read aloud. It was read to soldiers the night before a battle to scare them into fighting. I had no idea of any of that. He was so thoroughly steeped in the politics of his time that it was research - while I was reading Dante I had to look up each and every person he referenced. He mentions the Capulets and the Montagues in the middle of "Purgatorio."
Q. With all that research, how did you restrain yourself from getting it all in?
A. There's a whole third of the book that's gone. A lot if that is asides about the treatment of Jews in Verona and all this other stuff. While it's interesting, if it didn't move the story along it had to go. There are a lot of really bad scenes that I'm really glad are gone.
Q. What books do you like to read?
A. Dorothy Dunnett - she's astonishing! Bernard Cornwell. Patrick O'Brian. Dashiell Hammett. My wife [Jan] and I are huge Thin Man fans. We have a 1 1/2-year-old named Dash.
Q. Did you ever try writing a book before?
A. I wrote a novel when I was 19 that wll forever live in a drawer. It's everything I needed to say about me to get out of my own way.
Q. What kind of advice would you give to a first-time novelist?
A. Don't judge your writing. I know too many writers who get in their own way before they set pen to paper. They stop themselves because they want the scene to be perfect. I say create the raw material and refine from there.
Q. Your wife is also in theater. How did you meet?
A. Doing "Taming of the Shrew" - we were Kate and Petruchio. She and I have also done Beatrice and Benedick, Mac and Lady Mac, and Oberon and Titania.
Q. All the battling couples.
A. Yes. We keep our drama onstage.
Mary Wisniewski is a Sun-Times business reporter.
