The Master of Verona

Shakespearean Characters in MV

One of the questions in the interview over at Historical Novels was "How many Shakespearean characters are in THE MASTER OF VERONA?"

Now, I've thought about how many plays I referenced, but I've never done a strict character count. So I guessed, counting characters off the top of my head, and came to seventeen. But since then I've gone back and done a real count. I could still be missing some, but by my current tally, it's twenty-three. But some of those are really cheating, and no one but me would know about some of them.

Here's the list:

Plays Referenced: R&J, Shrew, Merchant, Much Ado, M4M, 2 Gents, Macbeth, Caesar, & A&C. And in one of the short stories, I sneak in a reference to 12th Night as well.

Crossover Characters:

Prince Escalus (R&J)

Mercutio (R&J)

Lord Capulet (R&J)

Lord Montague (R&J)

Lady Montague (R&J)

Tybalt (R&J)

Friar Lawrence (R&J)

Nurse’s Husband (mentioned in R&J)

Benedick (Much Ado)

Valentine’s Father (mentioned in 2 Gents)

Petruchio (Shrew)

Kate (Shrew)

Ferdinand (mentioned in Shrew)

Mentioned, but not Seen:

Lady Capulet (R&J)

Grumio (Shrew)

Lucentio (Shrew)

Vincentio (Shrew)

Don Pedro (Much Ado)

Don John (Much Ado)

Shylock (Merchant)

Bellario (mentioned in Merchant)

Valentine (2 Gents/R&J)

Escalus, Prince of Vienna (Measure For Measure)

The reference to Valentine and his father is sneaky in the extreme, and really shouldn’t count until the next book, when he truly appears. Lucentio appears only in reference to his father, which is again very sneaky. I made up a name for the Nurse’s Husband, since Shakespeare never gives him one. Same for lady Cap. As you can see, very few of these people appear in the novel under their Shakespearean name.

 

For the record, I've played nine of these characters onstage.

THE SHOEMAKER'S SON - A Short Story

THE SHOEMAKER'S SON
a Tale of Illyria
wherein the HANDSOME KNIGHT discovers true LONGING
 
Lyons, France
1 October, 1316
 
The banners were so red they might have been made of actual flame. They snaked out, unfurling with a hearty crack before whipping back under the fury of the mighty wind called the Mistral. The oarsmen swept back and heaved in rhythm with the choir that sang holy songs in both Latin and French – but not Italian. It was the gentlest hint of things to come.

The banks of the Rhone were teeming with men and women. Several fell in, pushed from behind by those who wanted a better view. When again in their lifetimes could they expect to lay eyes upon St. Peter’s heir? Especially as there were men pressing him to return to papacy to Rome, making Clement’s transplanting of the Holy See a temporary aberration, a hiccough in the history of the Church. So the French citizens of all the lands between Lyons and Avignon flocked to river’s edge, that when they prayed they could attach a face to their pleas.

Not that they could see his face. In the throne aboard ship, the figure was practically swallowed by his hat and gown, despite their being tailored to him. A gnome of a man, delicate and diminutive. Even the throne itself, high on the pedestal, was cleverly designed to hide the fact that his feet couldn’t reach the floor. Instead there was a step built into the front that pretended to be a footrest for the most mighty man in all of Christendom.

He had been Pope for less than two months, yet already his fellow cardinals were growing uneasy. Perhaps this was easily explained by the absence of a pope these last two years – they had grown used to life without an overlord. Or perhaps it was the unimpressive nature of the new Holy Father. For he seemed more suited to be a Fool than a Prince.

Several French girls on the shore, disappointed by the dwarf on the papal throne, cast their eyes about the massive barge for a sight more pleasing to their eyes. Almost at once they found a most deserving young man, tucked away on the lower level and far removed from His Holiness. The man had a naturally fair complexion that was tanned but not burned – active without being delicate. His black hair was a little longer than the old men around him. He was dressed in the finest cloth, the cut of his doublet so high as to be almost scandalous. There, just below the hem, a girl could see the faintest curve of his firm buttock. Scandalous, and delightful. He was the ideal of the modern French knight.  

The fact that he passed for French would have gratified the young man, had he known. Nineteen years old now, married for over a year and still yet a virgin – a status which many a French maid had attempted to undo – Ser Mariotto Montecchio was the epitome of chivalry. And true chivalry, as everyone knew, began in France.

There was but one stain marring the perfection of his honor. Like Lancelot had Arthur, Mariotto had betrayed his closest friend, stealing his betrothed. But the love the girl had given Ser Montecchio was far more than the mere kindly affection she had felt for Ser Capulletto. And chivalry was all about the wishes of women – great deeds in their names, and making them supremely happy. Was that not what he had done? Make Gianozza happy?

In his heart, the argument rang false. Chivalry was about pining from afar, the idea of an unattainable woman. Dante had never wed his Beatrice, marrying instead a woman for whom he had felt nothing, siring four living children on her, including Mariotto’s good friend, Pietro. Yet it was the relationship between Beatrice and Dante that men spoke of, the love that transcended the physical. For, ideally, love and marriage were not meant to be joined. Marriage soiled love’s perfection.

So why did I marry? he wondered. The answer was simple, and shaming. He had wanted her.

But fortune had conspired to make theirs a great tale of love after all. Fate, in the guise of the Lord of Verona, had separated them, sending him here to the Papal Court on the very day of his wedding. His exile from his bride made him pine, and long, and dream. From her letters, Gianozza felt the same. Theirs was indeed destined to be a great love, like Dante and Beatrice, Antony and Cleopatra, Troilus and Cressida.

He was unaware that the slight air of suffering about him made him all the more attractive. All he knew was that he had been forced to rebuff – sometimes physically – the attentions of dozens of girls over the last year and a half. But such was the certainty of his love that he was never tempted. And the men who broke bread with him each day thought him the greatest fool they had ever met.

Upon arriving in the summer of 1315, Mariotto had attached himself to the party of Cardinal Napoleone Orsini, and man who was both the lion and the bear, as his name indicated. He was rumored to be a favorite for the office of Pope, and as they spoke nearly the same language (Veronese Italian differed from Roman Italian only in dialect), it seemed a natural move. Mariotto had orders to lobby the new Pope in Verona’s favor – it would be well if he had a friendship with that new Pope before the office was granted.

His plan had failed, however, with the election of Jacques d’Euse. It had come as quite a shock, and not only to Mariotto. After two years without a Holy Father, the latest French king had bullied and bribed all the cardinals together and forced them into a castle to do their duty and choose a pontiff. It gave new meaning to the term conclave – con clave, literally, with key. While they held the key to God’s heir on earth, Philip V held the key to their freedom.

Mariotto had waited with so many others outside the castle, watching for the telltale smoke that would signify Orsini’s election. But, when the white smoke had come and the doors had opened, it was instead a cordwainer’s son who had mounted St. Peter’s throne.

The little man had taken them all by surprise, nominating himself. Trained in both the law and in medicine, his career in the clergy had been mostly spent presiding over the seaside See of Frejus, a pleasurable duty, and in Avignon, providing advice more legal than spiritual. How he had swung them around to vote for him, no one quite said. Certainly Orsini had been mute on the subject.

Now, standing beside Ser Montecchio, Cardinal Orsini looked out over the water. Softly he murmured, “Illyria, I am coming.”

“Pardon?” said Mariotto.

The Cardinal looked abashed. He rubbed his chin with the back of his hand, then said, “I have a cousin who is prince of a city on the coast of Anatolia. It’s called Dubrovnik, but he has renamed it ‘Illyria.’”

“Illyria?”

“After Ilium, the fabled city of Helen and Paris.” Orsini smiled smugly. “For all that he’s a good prince, he is a fanciful fellow.”

“Fanciful how?”

“He is like you! He pines – oh, how he pines! He writes me of a wench – forgive me, a young maiden – for whom he would eat every apple in the world. Her father is a great man of the city, and her brother is one of the handsomest men in the land – by report, he would even rival you,” added the Cardinal, with a cheerful wink. “My cousin is quite young, and has talked himself into loving the lady from afar. For he is quite certain that with such men in her life already, he would pale in comparison.”

Mariotto frowned, a smile at the corners of his mouth. “That’s falling off the horse before you get to the rail.”

“I told you – fanciful. In that way he is not at all like you, who seized your moment. That is the difference between true love and this airy nonsense that people speak of by that name. True love demands action. Only in false love can a man wallow, peak, and pine.”

As pleasing as this idea was, ennobling as it did Mariotto’s one black deed, he found himself protesting. “But that’s contrary to what the poets –”

“Poets! Pfah! Poets are in love with words, not women. It is like the Church. There are men of the cloth who mouth the words of Christ, and those who live them. Love of Christ demands action. Misguided as many of the Crusades have been, one cannot fault the passion with which the Crusaders spurred off to fight. Christ himself was a man of action – his love of his Father made him perform miracles, and beat those craven money-lenders. I tell you, if I have been tempted to any violence in my life, it has been to emulate him in that act. For I swear to you, Mariotto, I detest even the smell of money!” He said this with a smile, but the steel in his voice underscored his vehemence. 

Mariotto paused, then returned to his original query. “So why do you say you are coming to Illyria?”

Again the Cardinal looked abashed. “Because Illyria is desire. It is a mythical state. It is the thing one wants most in the world. And, therefore, it is the thing most often denied. For me, Illyria is Rome. As Rome has been denied us these many years. But at last, we are returning.”

Mariotto perked up at once. This was news! “He’s returning the Holy See to Rome?”

Orsini nodded. “There is no harm, I think, in speaking of it, now the election is past and he has been ordained. Our new Holy Father has sworn an oath to me, upon the consecrated Host and before all the entire conclave, that he will never again mount a horse or mule except in the direction of Rome.”

Mariotto frowned. He lacked a lawyer’s mind, but this seemed a convoluted oath to take. “Is that why –?”

“We float instead of ride? Yes,” answered the Cardinal. “He is keeping his word. Rightly, he points out that Avignon is the current site of his authority, and he must attend to matters there before he makes such a drastic change.”

“No disrespect, but he is very old, and quite frail,” observed Mariotto. “What if, God forbid, he does not live to see his promise carried out?”

“Then we shall elect another who will. But that will not be necessary. All I have ever known of him tells me he is a man of his word.”

They traveled on for hours, waving and smiling to the throngs on the river’s edges. Refreshments were served, and there was a great deal of merriment. Among the Italians of every Order the cheer was the greatest – word had slowly spread that they were at last to return home.

The sun was already low in the autumnal sky when Avignon came into view. The little Pope, with great decorum, lifted himself from his throne and crossed to the rail where Orsini and Ser Montecchio, along with many others of their nation, had congregated.

“Mon frere!” cried the wizened Pope to Orsini. “See how vibrant the heavens are above my beloved France!”

“Indeed,” agreed the Cardinal warmly. “I am certain it seems all the more lovely, as you contemplate leaving it behind. If death is indeed the mother of beauty, then exile is the father of patriotism.”

“What you say is profound, and true,” said the Pontiff. “I find in me no inch that is not filled with love for France. Therefore I have decided that I must delay preparations for a return to Rome.”

“For how long?” asked Orsini, his generous spirit devoid of the suspicion that Mariotto, listening intently, felt all too keenly.

As it happened, Mariotto’s suspicions were justified. “Indefinitely,” said the little Pope, his sorrowful expression not reaching his eyes.

For a suspended moment, Cardinal Orsini wrestled with the meaning of this word. Then, like a thunderclap, the Pontiff’s purpose was made clear, and Orsini felt a though his ribs had been levered open and his heart removed before the gaze of all the world. “You mean you do not intend to return the Holy See to Rome?”

The little man in the grand hat and gown blinked several times. “You wish me to leave my own country for all eternity, to lock myself away in that ruined country you call Love? Oh, bless me, no! Roma is not Amor for me.”

“But – it has been the home of the papacy since the first Pope, Peter himself, chose Rome as the finest and grandest city in all the world!”

“Is that still true today? The world has shifted away from Rome, mon frere, and we must follow the world’s lead.”

“As Holy Father, you are charged to lead, not to follow.”

“And so I am, by leading us away from blind adherence to tradition. But in one way you are mistaken. I must lead my flock, but I must follow God. God has led the papacy to Avignon. Where he leads, I must follow.”

By sheer force of will, Orsini kept his voice level. “The Lord, one of your titles is Bishop of Rome.”

“It is a title I can do without. My dear Orsini, the same Lord that gave the blessed Apostle Peter the power to bind and loose – he is everywhere, is he not? Certainly he is as present here in this lush and vibrant land as he is in the decayed maw of the seven hills. I am afraid this journey has quite determined me – I will stay in Avignon. No, I pray you, do no protest! Your Italy smiles to you, but for me it would only be a land of exile and despair.”

Struggling, Orsini’s obedience lost to his need to protest. “Your Grace – Rome is the capital of the Christian world.”

“The Christian world needs no capital, mon frere. The Lord our God is everywhere, ever present. And he will forgive the whims of an old man too tired to travel so very far.”

“Your Holiness, your promise – you vowed upon the sacred Host that you would restore the papacy to the Vatican hill!”

Jacques d’Euse sighed. “And my dear Cardinal, I promise you – I will not be forsworn.”

And indeed, Orsini could see the litter carried by servants that awaited the Pontiff on the quay. A litter that had already been arranged, did not have to be sent for. Mariotto watched as realization flooded Cardinal Orsini’s face. Jacques d’Euse,  the son of a shoemaker, now Pope John XXII, had never intended to return to Rome. It had all been a ruse to gain immense – and irrevocable – power.

As Mariotto Montecchio joined the procession that followed the dwarfish Pontiff back onto French soil, the Cardinal lingered behind, as bereft of words as of recourse. Like his cousin and namesake in distant Illyria, all that remained in Cardinal Orsini was his longing.

VARNISHED FACES - Afterword

For those keeping score, VARNISHED FACES falls between chapters 27 and 28 in THE MASTER OF VERONA, at the very beginning of the Fourth Act, entitled The Exiles.

There are several reasons why this story pleases me. It fills in a few deficiencies in MV. We never meet Giotto in the novel, though he’s referenced often enough. Nor do we spend much time in Padua. And while the rivalry between Carrara and Pietro has a nice arc, the rancor between Carrara and Antony is left untouched. Rightly, Antony blames Mari for the whole debacle over Gianozza, and that’s what plays out in the book. But the Paduan Marsilio played a large part in that drama, and Antony certainly would not have forgotten it. 

But my favorite reason for bringing this story to light is the plethora of Paduan characters. While my novels naturally take place in and around Verona, Padua was one of Shakespeare’s favorite places to reference. Here I’m able to bring all those references together. Characters from Much Ado, Shrew, Merchant, and R&J all meet here. It was tempting to add Speed from 2Gents, but according to my own timeline the action of that show happens much later – in the 1330s at the earliest – so I decided against it.

Antony’s uncle is a necessity – in R&J there is an “old Capulet” who once joined Antony in crashing this wedding in a mask. Ludovico is dead by then, or else my whole planning is thrown out of whack. So I invented Arnaldo to fill the void. In fact, I created him for the second novel in the series, VOICE OF THE FALCONER, but I’m delighted to retroactively introduce him here.

Giotto finished painting the Scrovegni chapel in 1305, but there’s a blank space between 1314 and 1317 where he was wandering around a bit, and there’s evidence that he worked on the Basilica of San Antonio – though I haven’t been able to confirm the date of that work. Since that work no longer exists, the date will remain unknown, and thus can fit my story.

Of Giotto’s extant work, Scrovegni remains the highest praised and most visited. I first saw it in 1997, when I spent a single day of a six-month whirlwind tour of Europe in Padua. Afterwards, with some time on my hands and knowing I was about to audition for Petruchio when I returned to the States, I sat on a bridge overlooking the Bacchiglione and read through Shrew again.

Months later I landed the part, and it was in that production that I met my wife Jan.

So, in a way, Padua has been very lucky for me. As Petruchio says: “Padua affords nothing but what is kind.”

VARNISHED FACES - Part Three

ACT the THIRD
wherein the FLEEING KNIGHT finds REFUGE in ART
 
Bursting through a stand of pines growing at the river’s mouth, Antony considered making a run across the bridge, but caution made him lie down and watch. He’d been running flat out for five minutes and needed to regain his breath. Besides, the bridge was too obvious. He ought to double back. I only hope they haven’t set loose any hounds…

The mask was gone, as was the cap, but he’d kept the doublet, dark as it was. However there was the matter of his hair. Sandy blonde, it could betray him in the darkness. He rubbed the dirt from the base of the trees over his face and hair, then had an inspiration. Reaching up, he plucked pines needles down and stuck them into his hair, masking (he hoped) the light with the dark.

A group with torches came racing out of a side street, Carrara in the lead, still wearing his ruined farsetto. Antony pressed his lips together to keep from laughing. It was worth it! It was entirely worth it! Oh Pietro, if only you could see it!

They addressed the guards at the bridge, who declared they had seen no one this last quarter of an hour. “Well, keep watch – a large fellow in dark clothes, wearing a devil mask!”

“Wait!” cried a familiar voice. Bonaventura pushed to the fore, squinting towards Antony’s hiding place. Antony cursed the man with all the venom he owned. No doubt Bonaventura was having the time of his life! Antony girded himself to run again. He had already made the decision that if they caught him, let him be put to death rather than admit his name. For a knight to behave so was ridiculous. Let them think him a base-born wedding-crashing lout, and string him up from the nearest tree.

But they’d have to find him first! Blood was coursing through him, and he grinned in spite of himself. Enjoying life more than he had in months, Antony turned to pass a comment with Mariotto.

Who, of course, was not there.

Pleasure dying within him, Antony darted a look through the trees. Bonaventura was pointing, and Antony heard him cry “I think I see him!”

“Where?” demanded Carrara.

“Up there – past those trees, along the wall!”

Carrara was off again, passing mere yards from where Antony lay. Bonaventura was running in the Paduan’s wake, and Antony thought he caught the ghost of a wink as he went by. Antony waited until they were past, and then moved into the shadows away from both bridge and wall, back towards the city’s center.

Closer to Padua’s Piazza dei Signoria he stepped into the light, keeping his pace even. If he was seen running it would be suspicious. Instead he made a show of chuckling softly and plucking the pine needles from his hair, as if they were a great joke. He greeted the men and women he encountered with a smile and a familiar wave, leaving them wondering if they knew him.

But the pursuers had not given up, and if anyone inspected him closely they would be able to recognize the doublet and hose. He needed a place to hide.

The very moment he was thinking this he heard a clatter across the square, from inside a gigantic basilica. A church! Blazing with light – an evening service, perhaps? Whatever, it was the perfect place to hide. He’d lose himself in the pews for a few hours, say a series of prayers for forgiveness and concealment, then go about his business once all the fuss had died down.

As he drew nearer the massive double doors he saw an inscription that heartened him even further – a dedication to San Antonio! Perfect. He would find refuge in the church of his namesake, who also happened to be Padua’s patron saint. 

But to Antony’s great confusion there was only one man within, dressed in a smock and ragged hose – not such rags as a beggar might wear, but those of a laborer saving his underclothes from the mess of his toil. He was hunkered down near a wall, surrounded by planks of wood with paint spattered across them and a half-dozen bowls.

Antony entered the huge cathedral and began making his way towards the fellow. Whoever he was, he was ugly. Looking at his profile Antony could not help thinking of a skull. Not that the face was thin! No, it was so square and rough as to have been quarried. But something about the set of the mouth, the deep set of the eyes, and the expanse of the forehead made Antony acutely aware of the bones beneath the flesh.

In one paint-covered hand was a brush, and two more of different thicknesses were held between his teeth. His right hand held a bowl that seemed to fascinate him. As Antony approached, the man looked up and held out the bowl. Around the brushes he mumbled, “What does that look like to you?”

Antony leaned over. “Paint.”

The artist made an anguished grunt. “What color!”

“Oh. Blue.”

“What kind of blue?”

“Blue – blue, like –” Like Giulia’s eyes. “Just blue.”

The painter shook his head and spat the brushes to the ground. “Terrible thing, when a painter begins to squint. I need more light!” he shouted at a boy just entering the chapel, who scampered off on the double. “If you’re here for mass, they’ll be at the Duomo. This church is not in service until we’re finished.”

It was on the tip of Antony’s tongue to ask where the Duomo was, but instead something made him say, “I just need a place to hide for awhile.”

The ugly painter studied him with little interest. “Thief?”

“No.”

“Murder anyone?”

“No!”

“Then what did you do?”

“I angered an overweening ass.”

“Good for you. Put on a smock and keep me company.”

At once Antony stripped off his doublet and replaced it with a rough smock hanging over a pew. Instantly he found another bowl and pestle shoved into his hands. “Mix this. And get some on your face and hands. Just not on the floor, if you please.”

Hunkering down in the shadow of a pew out of sight of the door, close to the wall the painter was dabbing at with his brush, Antony set to work grinding the ingredients in the bowl. “Thank you.”

“No worries,” said the man shortly, his concentration entirely on the fresco. It was a scene from the life of San Antonio, when the Divine Child appeared to the frail holy man known as ‘the hammer of heretics.’ The haloed child was in the Franciscan’s arms as he kissed the monk on the cheek. Out the window there was a choir of peasants, singing the Divine Child to sleep.

Even as Antony studied the painted scene there was a rush of footfalls outside and the hubbub of voices. Carrara’s voice called sharply across the apse. “You there! Artist! Have you seen..?”

“Go away!” said the painter peremptorily, not looking up.

Antony hunched his shoulders, redoubling his work with the pestle. Carrara was coming closer, enraged. “Look here, man! You can’t speak to me –”

“Don’t want to be speaking to you! It’s you what’s bothering me!”

Carrara was probably debating drawing his sword and killing the painter, holy ground or no. For a mere artisan to speak so to a knight – it was unheard of, and worth at least a week in stocks or a vicious flogging.

Then Antony heard Hortensio’s voice whispering in Carrara’s ear. Antony couldn’t quite hear all of it, but one bit echoed quite loudly through the stone chamber. “…not realize, but that’s Maestro Giotto di Bondone. The painter,” Hortensio added, in case Carrara didn’t know.

But clearly the name was familiar to the knight, for when he spoke again his tone was more deferential. “Maestro, forgive me, but have you seen a big fellow all in black? Someone said they saw him heading this way…”  

“Busy!” cried the artist. Then he added, “Leave the torch in the bracket on your way out.”

Antony couldn’t see Carrara’s face, but he could imagine the consternation crossing it. The sound of Carrara’s boots made him stiffen, but they were receding, not approaching. There was an angry thunk as the torch was unceremoniously dropped into a sconce. Then Carrara was gone, in high dudgeon. Poor Marsilio, thought Antony gleefully. He’s not having a very pleasant evening.

However, the name of the painter had caught Antony’s attention. “You’re Giotto.”

“So I’m told.”

“I know Dante!”

“Do you?” Still focused on the knot of singing faces, Giotto’s tone skeptical.

“I’m friends with his son Pietro,” explained Antony hastily.

“Ah! He of the gimpy leg, I hear.”

“He talks of you…” Antony hesitated, thinking that perhaps the story Pietro had told was not flattering to the painter.

Giotto finally turned his square head from the fresco and grinned. “Repeating that old line about painting in daylight, I suppose.”

Antony laughed in relief. “Yes.”

“My one moment of wit.” The artist returned to studying the fresco in discontent.

“What are you doing in Padua?”

“Painting.”

“Oh,” said Antony, subsiding.

The artist seemed to relent – or perhaps he was frustrated, for he threw his brush to the ground. “It’s the damn Scrovegni,” sighed Giotto. “They’ve doomed me.”

It was a family Antony had heard of – they had been at the ball this evening. “Didn’t you decorate a chapel for them? That was, what, five years..?”

“Ten. And this isn’t for them. It’s because of them. They’ve been prating about the chapel, showing it off, bragging on my art. Flattering, surely, but ever since I’ve been hounded by patrons of the arts, city officials, everybody with money. Padua wants something of mine more than the Arena Chapel, if only to shut the Scrovegni up! Ten years of nagging and pleading,” Giotto’s voice reflected the sneer on his face, “of whining and bribing. I finally accepted, not for the money, but for them to leave me alone! But do they? No. I agree to paint a scene from the life of San Antonio, and they keep at me. They want something just like – or, to be honest, just a little bit better than I gave the Scrovegni. It’s tempting to put three eyes on his face, and move his nose around to his ear. That would be daring! But is that what they want? No. They want something that other buffoons think is beautiful and, ugh, fashionable. I have no interest in fashion. I’m interested in painting – the texture, the composition, the story that’s told in light and shadow and slight tilts of the head or a roll of the eye.”

By this point in the rant, Antony was torn between jaw-dropped awe and tear-streaming laughter. Giotto saw his expression and snorted. “Oh, you may play at shock, young man, but let me tell you! It’s quite bedeviling, starting a new fad. They’re always expecting me to be coming up with something new. I didn’t invent painting. I didn’t even invent my style. I just wasn’t interested in painting in the same old way as everyone else, so I looked back a thousand years and stole from them.”

“Stole?”

“All great artists, son, are thieves. The best ones will admit it freely. I’m a great artist. I’m also a great thief. Which makes every artist a little bit of a villain – something we also revel in. Pfah!” Giotto sat in a pew and shook his head. “I tell you, sometimes I curse my so-called innovation. For hundreds of years we painters have worked the exact same way. Oh, there have been refinements in our tools, but the rules have been very precise. We painted this scene, from this perspective, in these colors, with this theme. Done and done. Then I came along and undammed the river.”

“So why don’t you just go back?”

“There’s no going back, even if I wanted to. Which I don’t. This new style is the worst – except for all the others.” Giotto flashed a grim grin. “I’m a painter, you see? O, I do a little architecture, a little sculpting from time to time. And I screw women as often as I can. But all of that is just what I do, outside of what I am. I am a painter. I paint. It’s what I do.”

“Everyone says you’re a genius at it.”

Giotto laughed until he coughed up a wad of sputum. Wiping his lips, his eyes still watering, he said, “That’s the thing that saves me. Genius is my armor. Because I’m said to be a genius, whatever I paint must be good – even if they don’t like it! And being a genius certainly helps with the ladies. But just between us – genius is a fraud. We’re all frauds, waiting to be found out. Cimabue, Dante, Ockham – we’re all terrified of the day that everyone figures out that we’re just feeling our way along, making mistakes just like everyone else. But they never do figure it out, so along we geniuses roll, like runaway wagons behind a frightened mare, pulled along until the mare stops or runs off a cliff.”

“Dante seems very certain.”

“He has to. He’s built a reputation on wit, and wit cannot be seen to falter. But I’ve seen him at work – he agonizes over every word that goes into that poem of his. He’s never certain of the first word until he’s come to the last, then he starts again, poking and testing each phrase. Like this,” said Giotto, pointing at a singing woman tucked into a crowd of faces. “She’s the one I got right. The other faces are wrong, and it’s her face that tells me so. We only know what we’ve done right compared to all the things we’ve botched. When her face doesn’t stand out as anything more than another face in the crowd, that’s when I’ll be satisfied.” Giotto stirred, and took the bowl from Antony’s hands. “With that in mind, it’s time for you to pay your due.”

Antony blinked. “What?”

“You required sanctuary. I provided it. Now you pay. Turn your head into the light. Good. Now, don’t move.” Giotto picked up a loose piece of planking, as yet unmarred by paint.

“What are you..?”

“Halt! Stop! Move not! Be still!” Settling himself in a place that had the best view of Antony’s face, the artist produced a black stick and began to make marks on the plank. “I have an eye for interesting faces. That woman in the choir, she’s based on a whore I knew once in Lucca. Most amazing cheekbones on a woman I’ve ever seen. You, for example, have a tremendous fine jaw.”

Antony felt a consciousness of his chin and tried not to stick it out. He watched out of the corner of his eye as the artist made marks on the board. Then, in far less time than Antony would have thought, he was finished. “Here.”

Giotto handed across the board and Antony looked at the crude smudges of charcoal that made up his image. “That’s not what I look like! I’ve seen my face.”

Giotto’s wide flat mouth turned down. “A looking glass is only a reflection. In the right hand, a brush can capture a man’s essence. In my hands, even a bit of coal or chalk may do the job.” He tossed his tool into the air and caught it again between his grubby fingers.

Antony held the plank up to better light. The hair and the chin he recognized. So too the nose, very like his brother’s. But there was something different, something he’d never seen when he had preened and primped himself before the looking glass.

He had sad eyes. Not naturally sad, turned down like a hound-dog’s. No, this sadness was in their expression, not their shape. They were the eyes of a slave, or a beaten woman. Windows into a shattered soul.

It came crashing down on him. That’s the man he now was. Timid. Embarrassed. Shy. Frightened. Less. It was not something he had understood – not even in the moments when he had hid from Carrara, or fretted over exposure. What did it matter if they found him out? Six months ago he wouldn’t have cared in the least! Rather he’d have exposed himself and thought it a terrific joke.

I did not realize that this business had changed who I am! I’ve always prided myself on being a bluff, straight-ahead fellow. But now I see I’m a milksop, a wilting flower in a bull’s body.  

I will not be that man, thought Antony defiantly. I will rally – I will win her love or die trying! Only death can end my love for her! And if Mari or Carrara or anyone gets in my way, I’ll crush them like so many ants!

“Now there’s a look!” cried Giotto, already making lines on another plank. “I don’t know what’s in your mind, but it’s a fire that matches my lady’s there!” He squinted again at Antony, the made some marks with his filthy thumb, jabbing and pulling at the smudges before him. “Ah. You see? All I need is a dozen more faces like that and my choir will be unique – where are you going?”

“It’s time I was leaving, Maestro,” said Antony, rising to his feet.

“You don’t want to see?” asked the artist, already turning the plank over.

“No need,” said Antony. “But someday I’m going to send you a commission.”

Giotto raised an eyebrow. “And how will I know it’s you?”

“The commission will have a name. It will be called the Giulia.” With that, Antony left the cathedral of his namesake, suddenly grateful for the wedding and all it had wrought.

A familiar strut returned to his step, Antony ventured fearlessly into the night air.

Behind him Giotto called again for more light.

VARNISHED FACES - Part Two

ACT the SECOND
wherein the DARING KNIGHT shows POOR MANNERS
 
“I’ve got it arranged,” murmured Uncle Arnaldo, edging in beside Antony. “The old man’s name is Gremio. Turns out he’s a jilted suitor for this Bianca trollop, and eager to distract himself by making a nice fat profit.” The older man cocked his head, probably frowning behind the mask. “What’s the matter?”

Antony jerked his chin, a significant gesture thanks to the elongated hard leather face over his own. “Carrara.”

Uncle Arnaldo traced the gesture to the handsome man so fastidiously and ostentatiously dressed. “So that’s the man who gave away your little bride. A shame. If you had been allowed to marry her, you’d be a member of his family, and this whole business would be a snap!”

Business! Unseen, Antony’s face set into a glower. It was the kind of statement his father was prone to making. Carrara had stolen his heart’s desire, made him a laughing-stock, and all these old men could see was the loss of their precious trade.

The moment Carrara had appeared Antony had excused himself from the others and withdrawn to a corner far from the pretty Paduan knight. If Carrara recognized him, he would be a double-fool, and could never show his face again, here or in Verona. Now he turned to his uncle and said, “So, you’re finished? We can leave?” Arnaldo looked wistfully at the magnificent banquet table, but nodded. “Good. Let’s be gone.”

They began to make their way through the throng towards the arched gates of the Minola house. Their path took them uncomfortably near the knight, but Carrara paid them no heed. He was surrounded by twittering females, recounting for them some heroic deed. It was only as Antony was passing him that he heard a piece of the tale.

“– and he was a trickster. Pretended he’d never fought a duel before. Maybe he hadn’t, come to think of it. The skill he showed was more the knife-in-the-back kind of cleverness, not the straight-forwardness a true knight displays. At one point he lured me close and, though no one saw it, tried to stab me with a dagger. I was able to dodge it, barely – oh, he was fast, like a serpent, was Alaghieri. He probably learned his fighting in the stews of France. But I refused to descend to his level. I dismounted and drew my sword, against his spear-shield. He had the longer reach, but I was able to disarm him and make him fight honorably, sword to sword –”

Antony froze in his tracks. Liar! It had been Carrara’s dishonorable behavior that had cost him the victory. Pietro Alaghieri, fighting in Antony’s stead, had been heroically honorable right to the end!

Nearly Antony turned to make a cutting remark, but Arnaldo shoved him onward towards the gate. Antony kept moving, casting an evil glance over his shoulder.

Not looking at his path, he collided with someone. To Antony’s horror, he found himself facing Signore Baptista Minola himself. The fat little man was startled as well, and peered a little drunkenly up at the horrific mask. “Gentlemen! You’re not leaving!”

“I’m afraid we must,” said Antony, bowing low. “Thank you for –”

“But you haven’t paid!” The father of the bride stepped up onto a stool much too small for his feet, making him stand on tiptoe, his curling shoes close together, so that he looked like a dancer. The image was made even more comical by the enormous gut that hung out over his belt, hiding the buckle entirely. Antony found himself facing the gut as their host cried out, “Friends! Our unknown guests, having eaten well of my table and drunk of my cellars, are now trying to escape without payment! It is tradition that each masked guest pays for his entertainment with a little of his own. Shall we permit them to leave?”

“NO!” chorused the crowd, and Antony felt the dreadful sensation of every eye turning upon him.

“No!” echoed Baptista Minola, laughing. He wagged a finger at Antony and Arnaldo. “Come, either sing for your supper, or else we shall have those masks off you and set you to work in the kitchens!” The old fellow looked down at them, beaming in tipsy delight. “Which of you wishes to pay first?”

Antony and Arnaldo exchanged a glance. Arnaldo said gruffly, “I cannot sing, but I will dance for my supper.”

Arnaldo had the musicians strike up a sprightly tune and, hands on hips, hopped from foot to foot, skipping lightly on his heavy feet, to the hilarity of all. Breath heaving and sweat pouring, Arnaldo capered and jogged in and out of time to the music, clapping and making a fool of himself, and winning the crowd entirely with his buffoonery.

When the music ended on a crashing mangle of notes, Arnaldo collapsed to a bench, feted by those around him. “Excellent! Excellent! I crown you King of the Capers!” Baptista turned to Antony. “Next?”

Before Antony could speak another voice said, “I’ll pay next, and gladly!”

Relieved, Antony turned to see the red-haired fellow in his humorously painted mask and shabby clothes pushing his way to the center of the dancers.

Baptista began the applause, and in that moment Antony looked towards the exit, now blocked by half a dozen revelers determined to have their fun. This was but another respite, not an escape.

“Excellent, young man!” cried Baptista in delight, then scolded Antony. “You’re next!”

“Then bring him more wine! He requires courage!” cried Arnaldo. Flagons and skins were passed to him from all sides. Antony subsided, setting himself on a bench. He would tell a joke, maybe. Or sing a bawdy song, and be done with it.

The red-haired masker crossed his arms and boldly said, “For my entertainment, I offer barbs of wit. Who dares challenge my razor tongue?”

Laughter, and at once Bonaventura shoved his friend Hortensio forward. “Him first! He needs shaving!”

The red-haired fellow looked Hortensio over from top to toe and said, “More like a fish that needs scaling. Throw him back!”

Long inured to being compared to aquatic creatures, Hortensio shrugged. “Better a fish than a foul fellow.”

The crowd groaned and the red-haired jester shook his head. “That’s what his wife said when he complained of her on the wedding night!” Hortensio gave a start and looked to his wife, who was laughing lustily and slapping her thighs. The jester snapped his fingers. “Oh, I’ve hooked him! Away, let’s have another!” He turned and pointed to the aging jurist beside Mussato. “Monsignore Bellario! You are said to have a great legal mind! Surely you can outwit this half-wit.”

Smiles creasing his face, Bellario stood. “I have represented many a half-wit, and judge that half a wit is twice the sort of man you are.”

“And what sort of man is that?”

“A lack-wit.”

Laughter and applause that had to die down before the red-headed jester could respond, which he did eagerly, pretending to count on his fingers. “Alack! If half is twice the lack, then lack is a quarter of your whole. But if I were to set up as a lawyer, my fees couldn’t be one-tenth of yours. Which means I’m a bargain! It’s the smart man who will hire an inexpensive lack-wit, and witless the man that pays for your services!”

Bellario laughed and bowed. “An excellent argument, sir. You should be an advocate.”

“And so I am, sir! I advocate wine, women, and song – in roughly that order! Next!”

“To him, Tranio!” cried the groom, nodding his man forward. Obediently Tranio trotted into the space cleared for the masker and said, “Sir, my master has stolen a woman who was betrothed to me – though I wooed her in his name, wearing his clothes. What recourse do I have at law?”

The red-haired jester put his knuckles to his chin in a parody of thought. “An interesting case. Tell me, sir, who gave you his name?”

“My master.”

“And who gave you his clothes?”

“He, himself.”

“Good, good. Now, when they were wed, what name did he use?”

“His own.”

“Had you given it back to him?”

“No, sir.”

“Nor the clothes?”

“No, sir! They were on my back.”

The masker clasped his hands behind his back. “Then I believe, as a matter of law, that he was not in possession of his name when he used it to marry the lady, and that she is actually wed to you. Take her, and welcome!”

Bonaventura clapped his hands. “Quite a step up for the son of a Bergamese sail-maker,” he quipped.

The masker cocked his head. “Bergamo is land-locked.”

Tranio looked sly. “My father is quite skilled. Come, lady – it seems I am your husband!”

The rosy-cheeked Bianca left the groom’s side and wrapped herself about Tranio in a way that made everyone but her uncomfortable. Desperately the masker rallied the moment, crossing to clap the unhappy Lucentio on the shoulder.

“Oh, come, Signore Lucentio! You have been given a marvelous reprieve! There are at least a dozen men here who long for their bachelor days once more! I attend weddings in much the same frame of mind as I attend funerals – a dear friend lost in both cases. I understand you were a man of studies, of thoughtful learning, who came to our great city to study at the University. But like a plague or the ague, love crept upon you and unbalanced your humors, upset your mind. Marriage is a bear-trap, and you have been freed of its jaws!”

When Lucentio failed to answer, his sister-in-law came to his defense. “Do you never intend to marry, sir?” asked Kate, sliding free of her husband’s arm.
“Never, lady,” declared the masker. “Not for dowry, not for favor, and certainly not for love! I see these married men here as so many lepers – look, your own husband appears particularly diseased!”

“Ha!” cried Ferdinando Bonaventura, pounding his cousin on the back. “Diseased!”

“That is only his crabby nature, he caught it not from me,” replied Kate. “He came looking for a wife, while I never looked for a husband – as this gentleman will attest,” she added, gesturing at the decrepit Gremio.

“No, sir!” agreed Gremio heartily, stamping his cane on the floor, causing skin to flake from his forehead. “We never thought to see her wed, much less tamed!” The crowd murmured in awed agreement and Bonaventura took a bow.

Kate took no notice, instead saying, “I daresay you protest too much against marriage. Does it not appeal to you?”

The masker did not falter. “Lady, no bachelor longs to be married – but every married man longs to be a bachelor!”

“Spoken like the youth who tugs a girl’s hair one year, and is plaiting it the next.”

“Not I, lady, I assure you. Young as I am, I have lost too many friends to the disease already. I am impervious to female charms.”

“Then,” said Kate with a sly look of her own, “you have never tasted of them.” With a twist and a half-shrug that exuded sultriness, she returned to her husband’s side and he kissed her, long and hard.

The crowd erupted. Before the masker could counter her claim, Baptista clapped his hands, crying, “I call that a debt paid! Don’t feel bad, son,” he added to the dejected red-headed fellow. “Only one man has ever bested her!” Still in mid-kiss, Bonaventura flexed his bicep and pumped it in the air. “That leaves us with one more unknown man to entertain us!”

All eyes turned to Antony, who stood and looked about. His eyes fell on Carrara, who had ignored the whole proceeding and was still working to impress the bevy of females clustered about him. Something in Antony fumed at the sight, and his fear of being humiliated evaporated as his natural bombasticity came to the fore.

“I cannot dance,” said Antony in an assumed voice gruffer even than his own. “Nor do I have the wit to spar with such great minds as fill this yard.” He bowed to Kate, just emerging from the kiss and settling herself on her husband’s knee. “But I do have one skill that might please – only it requires a partner.”

He pointed at Carrara. “You sir! You are a famed duelist! Would you oblige me?”

Carrara looked around, then realized that Antony was speaking to him. “I am not here to play for the masses,” he replied haughtily. “Besides, if we sparred, you would be dead in a moment, which would hardly be entertaining.”

“I don’t mean to fight you, my lord,” said Antony, assuming a tone more humble still. “I only mean that you alone among this assembly have the skill to match me.”

Bonaventura head had a wary tilt, and Kate was visibly apprehensive now. Before either of them could stop him, Antony lifted a lemon from the table in front of him and pitched it lightly towards Carrara, who had no choice but to catch it. Already another fruit was in the air, following it, and another. Lacking a third hand, Carrara pitched the first fruit back at Antony, and all at once they were partners in a juggling display.

Antony was a skilled juggler, having progressed as far as to play with knives on horseback. Carrara had seen that skill once, and Antony could only hope that the bastard didn’t recall it now.

Antony began to move along the banquet table, setting down each fruit and replacing it with something more entertaining – a spoon, a ladle, a bowl. More and more objects flew over the heads of the guests and they began to applaud. Carrara, not unwilling to show off his prowess, stood and began to circle the table himself, adding to their tally of objects hurtling through the air.

When Antony lifted a torch the crowd gasped, but Carrara caught it in stride and tossed it back, followed by a knife. Antony returned the knife with ease, and the ladies oohed and the men cheered for both performers.

Antony had an eye for one particular object that lay on Carrara’s side of the table, so he continued his circuit around the feast, building up to a quicker tempo, tossing more objects into the air than they could comfortably manage. Carrara frowned, spending all his concentration now on keeping these things aloft. Antony, too, suffered the strain, but he kept building the momentum.

Then he reached it – a custard dish meant for the bride and groom. He redoubled his pace again, using everything that was close to hand about the dish, throwing more objects than any man could manage. When all else was gone, he sent the dish hurtling not in a gentle arc but directly at Carrara’s chest like a discus.

The colorful confection exploded across Carrara’s perfect white doublet. Like the sudden stop of a galloping horse, the hilarity around them ended in a collective gasp, followed by a profound silence broken only by the objects falling unheeded to the ground around both men.

Carrara looked down at his beautiful, ruined clothing. Then up at Antony.

Who promptly turned and ran for his life.

VARNISHED FACES - Part One

Capulet: How long is’t now since last yourself and I were in a mask?
 
Old Man: By’r lady, thirty years.
 
Capulet: What, man! ‘tis not so much, ‘tis not so much:
‘Tis since the nuptial of Lucentio,
Come Pentecost as quickly as it will, 
Some five and twenty years; and then we went mask’d.
 – Romeo & Juliet, I.v.
  
“…Nor thrust your head into the public street
To gaze on Christian fools with varnish’d faces.”
 – The Merchant of Venice, II.v.

VARNISHED FACES

ACT the FIRST
wherein the MASQUED KNIGHT attends a BALL
 
Padua, Italy
May 25th, 1315
 
The silk streamers flowed in the gentle wind off the Bacchiglione, and the sweating revelers took it in turns to stand in those places where the breeze cooled the palace yard. Higher up the older folk reclined on the balconies, letting those of hotter blood dance and caper until the purple haze of twilight.

In the center of the throng below was the bride, taking it in turns to dance with each man present. Her groom kept stepping in, and each time he did she would titter and twirl onto another outstretched arm.

Finally, smiling through clenched teeth, he held her firmly by the hand and escorted her, skipping, down the row. “Darling. I am the groom.”

“Oh, but husband!” cried the bride in mock dismay. “Did you not have enough of me on our actual wedding day? No, my dearest Lucentio, my father has thrown this ball in our honor, and since my sister refuses, I must play the part of hostess.”

“Bianca,” he began, an unformed chastisement in his mind. But they had reached the end of the line of smiling faces. She drew her hand apart from his and blew him a kiss before latching on to yet another burly arm.

The man attached to it was not dancing, she saw too late, only edging along the side of the courtyard towards a servant bearing a fresh tray of goblets. Still, his face was covered in one of those grotesque Venetian Carnivale masks – delightful! An uninvited guest!

The rule of hospitality required the household to welcome such creatures, as long as they behaved. And there was always a fee, willingly paid. Most often you could tell by the condition of their clothes if they were laborers or dyers or such, masked to rub elbows with their betters. But not this fellow! Though he had the body of a laborer, even more muscular than he was tall, he was dressed in the finest of doublets, neatly stitched.

“Come and dance!” she cried, tugging him away from the wine just as he was reaching for it.

“Lady, forgive me,” came a voice as rough as his clothes were fair. “I can’t.”

“What you cannot do,” she said, “is refuse me – I’m the bride!”

“I would fall on you,” he said bluntly. “My leg’s not up to dancing.”

As she walked another step with him she noticed he was indeed limping. “Oh, poor dear – was that from a battle? Were you at Vicenza?”

He seemed flustered. “I was there, yes.”

“Oh, you mustn’t be ashamed,” she said, interpreting his shyness. “Those awful Veronese only won through a trick. Though I suppose I shouldn’t say aught against them, as I’m now related to one.” She pointed to a bearded man with long hair, laughing boisterously with his teeth bared. “Signore Bonaventura, married to my sister. There, with the red-hair and the scowl.” The woman in question didn’t seem to be scowling, but that hardly mattered to Bianca. “You think I’m prettier, don’t you?”

“You are very lively,” said the masked man by way of reply.

“Am I the prettiest girl you’ve ever seen?”

That seemed to check the man, but he rallied. “You are as lovely as any girl on her wedding night should be.”

“That’s a lopsided compliment. Oh, I see – you have a sweetheart! Does she know, or do you pine from afar?”

But the masked man seemed to have had enough. “Your husband is looking for you.”

“Let him whistle,” said Bianca. “He’s lucky to have me. Now, tell me – who are you really? Do we know each other?”

“No, lady,” said the rough fellow. “We’ve never met. I am a total stranger.”

“I don’t believe you,” she said, leaning close. The flush in her cheeks spoke of more than mere heat and excitement – she had been at the wine. “That is a very frightening mask. Are you hinting at some devilishness in your personality?” She batted her eyes at him, and he disengaged himself from her arm and turned her back toward the dancing. Too many eyes were turning in their direction.

Fortunately the dance was bringing her husband their way. The big man in the mask almost shoved her at the groom. “I believe this lady belongs to you.”

“He likes to think so!” cried Bianca as she was led away, back into the throng. “I will not rest until I have divined your name!” She twittered, and added, “I have a penchant for men in disguise – ask my husband!” With a wave over the scowling Lucentio’s shoulder, she vanished into the crowd.

Quickly the masked man moved further off, ending in a corner of the yard that had a little garden with a single lemon tree. Shielded behind its sheltering leaves, he raised the mask and wiped his brow.

Bianca’s question repeated itself in his head: “Does she know, or do you pine from afar?”

Both, you little tart. Both.

Antony Capulletto replaced the mask, making sure his fair hair was completely hidden beneath the cowl. It was desperately vital that he not be recognized. He hoped his companion was being discreet. To be found out here, tonight, would be an absolute disaster.

Of course, he was supposed to be here with someone else. This night was one of the many plans he had hatched with his friends – to invade the next great Paduan wedding in masks and show them where they could stuff their beloved patavinitas.

But that was before Lent, before the Palio and the duel. Before the Great Betrayal. Both those friends were gone, now. In their stead, Antony’s uncle from Capua had accompanied him, for a mercenary design. At the moment Uncle Arnaldo was somewhere up above, deep in conversation with some ancient Paduan with scaling skin that flaked and fell from his face with every breath.

Antony’s eyes rested once more on the bride. Oddly enough, he’d seen her sister naked a few months back – along with most of Verona. Antony wasn’t gentleman enough now to keep from undressing the dancing younger sister with his eyes to compare them.

But instead another figure swept into her place, dispossessing the bride and all the revels of their luster. In place of Bianca Minola’s shimmering red-blonde, there were pure black falls that framed a face so white and so marvelously sad that Antony had wanted nothing more in life than to make the world a better place for her. His betrothed. His love. His Giulia.

But another had jumped into his seat. Worse, his best friend, the man he trusted above all others. Mariotto Montecchio. Aided by the girls’ cousin, a Paduan knight, Mari had whisked her off and married her before anyone knew aught was amiss. A duel had been fought, with champions instead of their own persons, due to Antony’s broken leg. Pietro Alaghieri versus that Paduan bastard Marsilio da Carrara, who had given his Giulia to Mari. Carrara had won, but without any honor. The marriage was allowed to stand. Antony’s heart had broken a second time.

Since then it had been lonely. Pietro had been packed off to school, and Mari was off to Avignon on an errand for the lord of Verona. They had been his true friends – well, Pietro had proved himself to be just that, in the end. While Mari had been the basest of betrayers.

Antony had sat in a blue haze for months, allowing his leg to heal. Then, just a week ago, his father had called him into the study and closed the doors.

“Luigi is off fussing over that new brat of his, so we won’t be disturbed. First, how is the leg?”

The question was practical, not paternal. Antony answered in the same vein. “I can’t ride yet, but I can get around without the crutches.”

“Meaning you’re going to miss most of the campaigning season with the Scaliger. A damned shame. With both Montecchio and Alaghieri out of the way, you’d have been able to shine. Well, I’ve devised a way to make up for the loss. Do you remember your uncle Arnaldo?”

His father’s younger brother. Antony nodded.

“Well, he’s – acquired a fair assortment of armor, cheap. Not just armor, but pikes, halberds, spears, swords – a veritable arsenal. He’s looking for someone to sell it to.”

“You want me to talk to the Scaliger? He’ll listen to you more than me.”

Old Ludo had shaken his head. “No, Verona’s not in the market at the moment – well supplied from the Alps. But there’s one city that needs arms, after abandoning so many on the field last fall. Arnaldo figures that they’ll pay handsomely for even battered arms.” Suddenly Ludo looked flustered, as if he hadn’t meant to speak the last part aloud. Antony understood why – the arms his uncle had “acquired” were most likely from some losing condottiere, stripped from the dead bodies on the battlefield. There was a huge market in resale arms, but it was deemed both unlucky and ignoble.

Then Antony had realized what city his father meant, and his mouth fell open. “Padua! We can’t sell arms to Padua!”

“Of course we can,” his father had huffed. “What the Scaliger doesn’t know won’t hurt us. No, listen. Two weeks after Pentecost, Signore Minola of Padua is throwing a great banquet in honor of his youngest daughter’s wedding – though, as I understand it, the marriage took place months ago. Paduans are lunatics, throwing their money away like that. But, as I recall, you had a plan to attend a Paduan ball – in masks.”

Antony had stiffened. The plan had originated with Mari, and to even think of his former friend was like a knife to the stomach. Again he merely nodded his answer.

“Well, instead of that execrable bride-thief, you’ll take your uncle instead. This is our chance to break into the Paduan market –”

Unthinkably, Antony had protested. “Father – we’re not traders. Not anymore. We need to think like noblemen now.”

“Nonsense! Everyone trades. It’s only a difference of commodity, and degree. Business is business.”

Instantly Antony had given up. His scruples were less than his father’s ambition, and really he’d only protested because he didn’t like the idea of going. Antony had only shaken his head, saying, “Selling arms at a wedding feast.”

“Where better? From what I hear, the groom is going to need all the armament he can muster. Bonaventura was telling me the bride is like an unwalled city.”

So Antony and his uncle Arnaldo had ridden into Padua, taken lodgings under assumed names, and donned these ridiculous masks to attend the feast.

All in all, Antony did not like being used. But if Arnaldo could manage to sell his arms, the influx of wealth would have them rivaling the Scaliger himself. Which would, in turn, elevate his family, perhaps in time to impress a single individual, whose marriage was not yet consummate…

Now Antony noticed that he was not the only masked man watching the dancing. There was another fellow, not part of their little Veronese cabal. His clothes were a little rough, and he wasn’t bothering to cover his hair, which was a muddy red and worn rather long.

Just as Antony was reaching up to be certain his sweaty cowl was in place, someone said in his ear, “Capulletto, I know it’s you.”

Antony jumped and jerked around to see a bearded, barrel-chested man smiling at him through tangles of long curly hair. “Ser Bonaventura,” said Antony, instantly giving himself away. He realized his mistake and hastily added, “I don’t know who you…”

“Oh, come now. The frame, the youth – the Veronese cut to your cloth. With the limp I momentarily mistook you for your friend Ser Alaghieri – but he wouldn’t dare enter Padua at the moment. Carrara would eat him whole and spit out the bones. How’s the leg?”

“I – it’s… I don’t – how did you know it was..?”

“Knights aren’t supposed to go around in disguise,” said Petruchio Bonaventura in mock reproval.

“Nuns aren’t supposed to run brothels, but I’ve heard it happens,” came a rich feminine voice. “Ser Antonio, it was I that recognized you,” chided Bonaventura’s wife, sister to the bride, as she sidled up beside her husband.

Antony was instantly grateful of the mask, for it hid his flush – the last time he had seen her, she had been trying to humiliate her husband by appearing publicly in the nude. Astonishingly, she hadn’t succeeded.

To divert himself, he bowed low, focusing his eyes beyond the lady to the fresco on the wall behind her. It was of the goddess Diana in her grove, under the watchful gaze of the moon. The trees and animals were all painted with meticulous care. Only, Antony noted, Diana’s eyes had been scratched out, and repaired by an inferior hand.

Katerina Minola in Bonaventura noted Antony’s long gaze at the wall and said, “You admire my handiwork?”

“Yours?” asked Antony.

“Handiwork!” snorted Bonaventura mirthfully.

“My father made me repair it. I did rather well, don’t you think?”

Antony nodded as her husband said, “For a woman. What made you scratch out poor Dian’s eyes in the first place?”

“I forget,” said Katerina, yawning.

“Of course,” said Antony. “This was your house until recently.”

“Until last twelfth night,” she supplied, then looked around and added, “My wedding was nothing like this.”

“How would you know?” asked her husband. “We weren’t there.” She gave him a withering smile and he barked out another laugh. Clearly he was enjoying himself hugely.

“I like your father’s yard,” said Antony, truthfully. “If I ever own a home, I’d like it to resemble this.”

“With better fresco-work, I hope,” said Bonaventura. His wife surreptitiously flicked his thigh with forefinger and thumb. He ignored her. “Antony, that mask is magnificent. You look like something out of old Alaghieri’s poem.”

Antony peered into a nearby looking glass, provided to reflect the torchlight, that the festivities might continue past the encroaching dark. The varnished leather face that leered back at him bore a twisting mouth beneath a monstrously hooked nose. Over them both were the holes for the eyes, one molded eyebrow arched, the other squinting. On top of all were the two short horns that made his devilishness complete. “I guess I do at that – though I still haven’t read it,” he admitted shame-facedly. How could he confess that though he owned a beautifully illustrated copy, he had never opened the cover. It had been a gift for his Giulia.

“It is hideous,” said Kate, wrinkling her nose.

Bonaventura puffed out his chest. “I say, handsome.”

Kate bowed her head a little. “Forgive me. It is gorgeous. It must have been the sunlight in my eyes.”

Antony looked up. “But, lady – the sun has set.”

“Has it?” Kate looked not up, but at her husband, who was laughing. She turned back to Antony. “It is actually a shame that your friend Alaghieri isn’t here. He could distract the groom from his plight. They went to school together in Pisa.”

“I didn’t know that,” said Antony, his eyes seeking the benighted groom even as he spoke. Lucentio was dancing with a much older woman, who looked as lustily at him as he was looking after his wife – who paid Lucentio no mind whatsoever.

 “So,” said Antony, his good-humor quickly restored – these two would not betray him. At least, as long as they did not know his errand. “How did you recognize me?”

“It is the way you bowed to my sister. No native Lombard bows that way. You may be a true Veronese in spirit, but occasionally you do betray your Capuan origins.”

“Oh,” said Antony, brow furrowed under his mask. What was wrong with the way he bowed?

Bonaventura smacked and rubbed his hands together. “This will be marvelous! The whole evening will be about guessing your identity. I’ll win a hundred wagers – mind you, give no sign that you know me.”

“Husband. No wagers.”

“I was just –”

“Oh, I know what you were –”

“Wife, do not presume –”

“Oh no! It’s the salted horse-hide for me, is it?”

“For the ultimate time, it was a joke! I prefer to kill with kindness.”

“Is that what you call it?”

Bonaventura was getting redder in the face, but delight gleamed in his eyes. Before he could continue, though, Antony decided to intrude. “There’s something I don’t understand. Aren’t they already married?”

Diverted to gazing at the bride and groom, Bonaventura barked out a laugh. “Tell him, Kate. I should die with laughter.”

“As bad as a death by mocks. The answer, Ser Antonio, is that there was no official wedding, only a secret affair and a hurried round of drinks after the fact.”

Bonaventura’s eyes twinkled. “There seems to have been a rash of secret weddings lately.”

Antony felt a hot flush rising. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell Bonaventura to take a running leap into the Bacchiglione, when the lady said, “I’m glad to see you so well, Ser Antonio. You’re recovering from your wounds quicker than poor Mussato.”

Scowling at the mirthful Bonaventura, Antony allowed himself to be diverted. “Oh, is he here?”

“Yes, there.” Katerina pointed. “See the man in the lawyer’s robes? That’s old Bellario, the jurist. Wait for him to move, and – yes, you see? He’s wearing his laurel wreath.”

“I see him,” said Antony with a hidden smile. Six months ago he’d run over the famous Paduan poet with his horse. It was pleasing to see that the old fraud was still suffering for it. Write a play about the Scaliger indeed!

“So, have you found out who he is?” Another man was descended upon them, his accent unmistakably Paduan. A heavy-lidded fellow, he had long puffed-out cheeks and lips set in a pouty moue, so he looked like a somnolent fish stuck in the slats of a fence.

“Ah, Hortensio!” cried Bonaventura. “Come and help us quiz this mystery guest? I’ve been attempting to divine a name, without luck. Care to make a wager on where he’s from?”

“Husband,” said Kate warningly – and not just to keep her husband from gambling. She was afraid that, in his enthusiasm to win a bet, Bonaventura would reveal all. A fear that Antony suddenly shared.

“Thank you, no,” replied the dour-faced man. “Wives, it seems, do not approve of wagers. Especially after that last one,” he added, with a significant glance at Kate, “I am forbidden from gambling.”

“Speaking of your wife,” said Bonaventura, looking about, “where is the lovely hearty widow?”

“Why do you insist on calling her that?” demanded the exasperated Hortensio. “She was a widow. She’s married now – to me!”

“Making you the widow-er!” laughed Bonaventura. “Or the widow-wooer!”

“What my husband means,” supplied Kate between the bursts of mirth, “is that you are away from her so often, visiting us, it is as if she were still widowed.”

“Lady, if I have intruded –”

“Not at all, you are always welcome. It is only that a lonely wife might invite – trouble. Is that not so, husband?”

“So it is, Kate! That’s why I never leave you alone for more than an hour – you might issue Trouble an invitation, and he might accept! Then where would I be?”

“You’d be wearing this fellow’s horns!” shouted Hortensio, pointing to Antony and laughing.

Instantly Antony balled up his fists to strike him flat. Then he remembered – his mask had horns on it. He relaxed.

“What’s the noise over there?” asked Bonaventura.

The lively bride was being confronted by the groom’s servant, marked as such by wearing his master’s colors. The mischief in the servant’s voice was good-natured as he cried, “I take it much unkindly, lady! You were betrothed to me! Master, should I demand satisfaction?”

“If you demand satisfaction of Lucentio, Tranio,” said Lucentio, laughing, “I’ll have my second fight my duel for me.”

“And who is your second?” demanded Tranio.

“Why, you yourself, of course.”

Tranio slapped his own face and pretended to duel with himself, right hand versus left, calling out insults for each one.

Bonaventura was guffawing along with the crowd. “I like that Tranio immensely. Do you think I could steal him away from your brother-in-law?”

“Give it a year, then try,” said Kate dryly. “By then he’ll have had about as much of my sister as any man not enjoying her could take.”

Husband and wife shared a look, while Antony laughed in spite of himself. It was rare to hear a lady be so frank – rare, and damned refreshing.

There was a commotion at the far end of the yard, and the dancing revelers made way for someone dressed in the finest white doublet Antony had ever seen. Usually the color of mourning, tonight it made its wearer stand out from all the dazzling rainbow colors of doublets, gonellas, and gowns. Across the chest of the doublet was embroidered the carro stemma, four mechanical wheels of the cart that symbolized Fortune, Prudence, Temperance, and Justice.

The crowd applauded for the hero of the hour, the man all Padua was talking about.

Inside his mask, Antony swore. “Oh fut!” He knew that symbol, and the man wearing it.

Marsilio da Carrara had arrived. 

Verona Short Stories

A year ago I published two short stories through the now-defunct Amazon Shorts program. I had more in the pipe, but finding that pipe stoppered, I've decided to post them here, serially.

The original intent behind these stories was to build up to the opening of VOICE OF THE FALCONER, filling in the eight-year gap between stories. But that was when FALCONER was due out last November. As it seems to be shelved, and as I'm deep in other projects (hence my enduring silence), posting the short stories keeps Verona alive. It may even spur me to complete those I had begun last year.

So in the coming week, keep an eye out. Or if you cannot wait, the shorts are still available on Amazon.

Cheers, DB

Bootlegging, and Benvolio's Death

Jay Donly, Sarah Leahy, Brian Carbine, Luna Alexander, Patrice Cross. Photo and lights by Jeromy Hopgood.

If you wanted to throw my whole theory about the cause of the feud out of whack, you could point out to me that Lady Montague does not, in fact, have the final death in the play.

I would answer with a nod, a sigh, a smile. “I know. Benvolio does.”

The first legitimate publication of Shakespeare’s plays was the First Folio. Put together by his actors after he died in a wonderfully mercenary attempt to raise cash, it sets down in print together for the first time the Bard’s most famous plays.

But there are discrepancies. Because of the expense involved in copying out a play, only the prompter or stage manager would have had a full text. Actors had their cues, their lines, and their stage directions, usually worked into the text. So when Condell and Heminges tried to put together 36 plays, there were several missing. Some they reconstructed by memory, or got lucky and the actors had held onto their rolls of ink-stained parchment (where we get the word 'role'). Some they had complete, thanks to a fastidious stage-manager. And some were taken from the Quartos.

In publishing terms, a Quarto is the result when four leaves of a book are created from a standard size sheet of paper. Each leaf is usually printed on both sides, leaving eight printed pages in total. In Shakspeare’s time this was true, but there was another wonderful connotation – bootleg.

Today when a movie comes out there are always some jerks in the audience with video cameras, and a shaky version of the film shows up the next day on the internet. This happened during Shakespeare’s heyday, too. Pretend you’re an Elizabethan going to see, say, Measure For Measure. You’re rich, so you’ve got a seat in the balcony. Down the row from you some shifty-looking patron is sitting with a quill and inkpot, scribbling in a fast shorthand every word the actors below are saying. A week later you see advertised at a different theatre a play called, astonishingly, Measure For Measure. There are no copyright laws, no redress or remuneration for the author. That’s just the way it goes.

Sometimes a Quarto would be published by the author, but far more often a Quarto of some play would appear having been ‘stolen’ as it were from a live performance. These Quartos sometimes have wild differences from the Folio versions, as bootleggers often could not write as fast as actors spoke. There were gaps that had to be filled in. If there are lots of these gaps, caulked in with low verse and poor rhymes, you get what is known as a ‘bad’ Quarto.

What has all this got to do with Benvolio? Because in the Second Quarto (the ‘bad’ Quarto, the ‘eeevil’ Quarto) of Romeo & Juliet, printed by Thomas Crede for Cuthbert Burby in 1599, Benvolio dies.

What? you cry aloud. How? Why?

Alas, I reply, we don’t know. Montague brings us news that his wife is dead. Then he adds, as if in after-thought, ‘And young Benvolio is deceased as well.’ No word of how or why. All we know is that no one makes it out of this play alive.

I actually like this line. It gives me a lot of freedom as a director. Several times now I’ve contrived ways to kill Benvolio in the latter part of the play. My favorite is to have him meet a girl at the Capulet party. Later, after Juliet has drunk her potion but before she’s found, Benvolio meets this girl for an assignation. They embrace, but she recoils at once. His sword-hilt is jabbing her. Sexily, she either removes his sword belt or unsheathes the weapon and lays it aside.

At that moment, unseen by Benvolio, Gregory and Sampson from the opening scene creep up. Benvolio senses them, however, and puts up a desperate fight. But he’s unarmed and is quickly killed. It’s a nice parallel to the light-hearted melee at the top of the show. Then – ah-ha! – Lady Capulet arrives to pay off her three servants, who then remove the body.

Lady Capulet. She’s already told Juliet that she’s planning to send a poison to Mantua and have Romeo done in. But she blames Benvolio for spinning a web of lies around the death of Tybalt, despite the fact that he spoke true. Would she let him, ‘a kinsman to the Montague,’ live? I think not!

So there’s a peek at how my mind works, filling in gaps much like the bootleggers of Shakespeare’s time.

I could refute the claim that Benvolio gets the final death by saying that maybe he died days ago, while Lady Montague died this very night. Maybe she sensed her son’s passing. Maybe she killed herself for her part in the fued. Maybe she did in fact die of grief. Or maybe she and Benvolio had a sexual-suicide pact and leapt naked off of one of Verona’s forty-eight towers. The world may never know.

The photo at the top is from my recent production at Eastern Michigan University, where I had a silent scene just after Juliet drinks the Friar's potion. Two women (Rosaline and the lively Helena) seduce Benvolio to a secluded spot, disarm him in preparation for sex, then Sampson appears and breaks Benvolio's neck. Lady Capulet then appears, paying off the ladies while Sampson drags the body away. At that moment, the next scene begins.

Jay Donly, Sarah Leahy, Brian Carbine, Luna Alexander, Patrice Cross. Photo and lights by Jeromy Hopgood.

If you wanted to throw my whole theory about the cause of the feud out of whack, you could point out to me that Lady Montague does not, in fact, have the final death in the play.

I would answer with a nod, a sigh, a smile. “I know. Benvolio does.”

The first legitimate publication of Shakespeare’s plays was the First Folio. Put together by his actors after he died in a wonderfully mercenary attempt to raise cash, it sets down in print together for the first time the Bard’s most famous plays.

But there are discrepancies. Because of the expense involved in copying out a play, only the prompter or stage manager would have had a full text. Actors had their cues, their lines, and their stage directions, usually worked into the text. So when Condell and Heminges tried to put together 36 plays, there were several missing. Some they reconstructed by memory, or got lucky and the actors had held onto their rolls of ink-stained parchment (where we get the word 'role'). Some they had complete, thanks to a fastidious stage-manager. And some were taken from the Quartos.

In publishing terms, a Quarto is the result when four leaves of a book are created from a standard size sheet of paper. Each leaf is usually printed on both sides, leaving eight printed pages in total. In Shakspeare’s time this was true, but there was another wonderful connotation – bootleg.

Today when a movie comes out there are always some jerks in the audience with video cameras, and a shaky version of the film shows up the next day on the internet. This happened during Shakespeare’s heyday, too. Pretend you’re an Elizabethan going to see, say, Measure For Measure. You’re rich, so you’ve got a seat in the balcony. Down the row from you some shifty-looking patron is sitting with a quill and inkpot, scribbling in a fast shorthand every word the actors below are saying. A week later you see advertised at a different theatre a play called, astonishingly, Measure For Measure. There are no copyright laws, no redress or remuneration for the author. That’s just the way it goes.

Sometimes a Quarto would be published by the author, but far more often a Quarto of some play would appear having been ‘stolen’ as it were from a live performance. These Quartos sometimes have wild differences from the Folio versions, as bootleggers often could not write as fast as actors spoke. There were gaps that had to be filled in. If there are lots of these gaps, caulked in with low verse and poor rhymes, you get what is known as a ‘bad’ Quarto.

What has all this got to do with Benvolio? Because in the Second Quarto (the ‘bad’ Quarto, the ‘eeevil’ Quarto) of Romeo & Juliet, printed by Thomas Crede for Cuthbert Burby in 1599, Benvolio dies.

What? you cry aloud. How? Why?

Alas, I reply, we don’t know. Montague brings us news that his wife is dead. Then he adds, as if in after-thought, ‘And young Benvolio is deceased as well.’ No word of how or why. All we know is that no one makes it out of this play alive.

I actually like this line. It gives me a lot of freedom as a director. Several times now I’ve contrived ways to kill Benvolio in the latter part of the play. My favorite is to have him meet a girl at the Capulet party. Later, after Juliet has drunk her potion but before she’s found, Benvolio meets this girl for an assignation. They embrace, but she recoils at once. His sword-hilt is jabbing her. Sexily, she either removes his sword belt or unsheathes the weapon and lays it aside.

At that moment, unseen by Benvolio, Gregory and Sampson from the opening scene creep up. Benvolio senses them, however, and puts up a desperate fight. But he’s unarmed and is quickly killed. It’s a nice parallel to the light-hearted melee at the top of the show. Then – ah-ha! – Lady Capulet arrives to pay off her three servants, who then remove the body.

Lady Capulet. She’s already told Juliet that she’s planning to send a poison to Mantua and have Romeo done in. But she blames Benvolio for spinning a web of lies around the death of Tybalt, despite the fact that he spoke true. Would she let him, ‘a kinsman to the Montague,’ live? I think not!

So there’s a peek at how my mind works, filling in gaps much like the bootleggers of Shakespeare’s time.

I could refute the claim that Benvolio gets the final death by saying that maybe he died days ago, while Lady Montague died this very night. Maybe she sensed her son’s passing. Maybe she killed herself for her part in the fued. Maybe she did in fact die of grief. Or maybe she and Benvolio had a sexual-suicide pact and leapt naked off of one of Verona’s forty-eight towers. The world may never know.

The photo at the top is from my recent production at Eastern Michigan University, where I had a silent scene just after Juliet drinks the Friar's potion. Two women (Rosaline and the lively Helena) seduce Benvolio to a secluded spot, disarm him in preparation for sex, then Sampson appears and breaks Benvolio's neck. Lady Capulet then appears, paying off the ladies while Sampson drags the body away. At that moment, the next scene begins.

Jay Donly, Sarah Leahy, Brian Carbine, Luna Alexander, Patrice Cross. Photo and lights by Jeromy Hopgood.

If you wanted to throw my whole theory about the cause of the feud out of whack, you could point out to me that Lady Montague does not, in fact, have the final death in the play.

I would answer with a nod, a sigh, a smile. “I know. Benvolio does.”

The first legitimate publication of Shakespeare’s plays was the First Folio. Put together by his actors after he died in a wonderfully mercenary attempt to raise cash, it sets down in print together for the first time the Bard’s most famous plays.

But there are discrepancies. Because of the expense involved in copying out a play, only the prompter or stage manager would have had a full text. Actors had their cues, their lines, and their stage directions, usually worked into the text. So when Condell and Heminges tried to put together 36 plays, there were several missing. Some they reconstructed by memory, or got lucky and the actors had held onto their rolls of ink-stained parchment (where we get the word 'role'). Some they had complete, thanks to a fastidious stage-manager. And some were taken from the Quartos.

In publishing terms, a Quarto is the result when four leaves of a book are created from a standard size sheet of paper. Each leaf is usually printed on both sides, leaving eight printed pages in total. In Shakspeare’s time this was true, but there was another wonderful connotation – bootleg.

Today when a movie comes out there are always some jerks in the audience with video cameras, and a shaky version of the film shows up the next day on the internet. This happened during Shakespeare’s heyday, too. Pretend you’re an Elizabethan going to see, say, Measure For Measure. You’re rich, so you’ve got a seat in the balcony. Down the row from you some shifty-looking patron is sitting with a quill and inkpot, scribbling in a fast shorthand every word the actors below are saying. A week later you see advertised at a different theatre a play called, astonishingly, Measure For Measure. There are no copyright laws, no redress or remuneration for the author. That’s just the way it goes.

Sometimes a Quarto would be published by the author, but far more often a Quarto of some play would appear having been ‘stolen’ as it were from a live performance. These Quartos sometimes have wild differences from the Folio versions, as bootleggers often could not write as fast as actors spoke. There were gaps that had to be filled in. If there are lots of these gaps, caulked in with low verse and poor rhymes, you get what is known as a ‘bad’ Quarto.

What has all this got to do with Benvolio? Because in the Second Quarto (the ‘bad’ Quarto, the ‘eeevil’ Quarto) of Romeo & Juliet, printed by Thomas Crede for Cuthbert Burby in 1599, Benvolio dies.

What? you cry aloud. How? Why?

Alas, I reply, we don’t know. Montague brings us news that his wife is dead. Then he adds, as if in after-thought, ‘And young Benvolio is deceased as well.’ No word of how or why. All we know is that no one makes it out of this play alive.

I actually like this line. It gives me a lot of freedom as a director. Several times now I’ve contrived ways to kill Benvolio in the latter part of the play. My favorite is to have him meet a girl at the Capulet party. Later, after Juliet has drunk her potion but before she’s found, Benvolio meets this girl for an assignation. They embrace, but she recoils at once. His sword-hilt is jabbing her. Sexily, she either removes his sword belt or unsheathes the weapon and lays it aside.

At that moment, unseen by Benvolio, Gregory and Sampson from the opening scene creep up. Benvolio senses them, however, and puts up a desperate fight. But he’s unarmed and is quickly killed. It’s a nice parallel to the light-hearted melee at the top of the show. Then – ah-ha! – Lady Capulet arrives to pay off her three servants, who then remove the body.

Lady Capulet. She’s already told Juliet that she’s planning to send a poison to Mantua and have Romeo done in. But she blames Benvolio for spinning a web of lies around the death of Tybalt, despite the fact that he spoke true. Would she let him, ‘a kinsman to the Montague,’ live? I think not!

So there’s a peek at how my mind works, filling in gaps much like the bootleggers of Shakespeare’s time.

I could refute the claim that Benvolio gets the final death by saying that maybe he died days ago, while Lady Montague died this very night. Maybe she sensed her son’s passing. Maybe she killed herself for her part in the fued. Maybe she did in fact die of grief. Or maybe she and Benvolio had a sexual-suicide pact and leapt naked off of one of Verona’s forty-eight towers. The world may never know.

The photo at the top is from my recent production at Eastern Michigan University, where I had a silent scene just after Juliet drinks the Friar's potion. Two women (Rosaline and the lively Helena) seduce Benvolio to a secluded spot, disarm him in preparation for sex, then Sampson appears and breaks Benvolio's neck. Lady Capulet then appears, paying off the ladies while Sampson drags the body away. At that moment, the next scene begins.

The Window Scene

    People always speak of the Balcony Scene from Romeo & Juliet as one of the "greatest romantic scenes in literature." Perhaps it is. But it's also two teenagers on the phone late at night. It even comes complete with the "You hang up!" "No, you hang up" moment. If played right, it is at least as funny as it is touching. 

    Being interested in the script, there is something that has always bothered me about this scene. With this most recent production, after years of snide remarks behind my hand, I did what I long have threatened: I got rid of Juliet's balcony. 

    I'm not the first, I'm sure. And I'll tell myself my motives were pure, that I did not do it to shock, but that I had excellent textual reasons (nowhere in the script does it say balcony. Romeo's line is "what light through yonder window breaks?"), etc. That way I can sleep at night.

    But you know something? It works. It works so very well. Why? For one simple reason: Juliet wasn't trapped.

    We call it the Balcony Scene because on the Globe stage, there were two balconies that were used for just these kind of scenes. But just because that's the way they staged it doesn't mean we should follow. This is an example of us being trapped by the traditions of Shakespeare's stage. By removing the balcony, I freed both Juliet and the audience.  

R&J Act II, Scene ii - Matt Anderson as Romeo, Stephanie VanAlstine as Juliet. Photo and lighting by Jeromy Hopgood. Set by John Charles.

     For me, the ground-floor window works because I can use it throughout the play. Every Juliet scene has an anchor, a touchstone. When we first discover her, she's in her bedroom listening to music. Later, when Romeo goes to leave, she can follow him, and already be in place for her mother's entrance. Logistically, it helps the show to flow. There's no waiting for her to get downstairs.

    Now, I'm the first to admit not every line is with me. Romeo has an oblique reference to "being o'er my head." But there are two or three other reasonable interpretations to that line. Likewise, I found ways to stage "One kiss and I'll descend" and "I see thee, now thou art so low, as one dead," both lines from the Morning-After scene, by using the window and a couple steps. And the cords the Nurse brings? We used those to help Romeo get over the wall.

    What I liked best about it was Juliet's freedom, and the intimacy it allowed her to share with the audience. Juliet is a character forever put on a pedestal - by teachers, by readers, by actors, by directors, by audiences, who all think of her as the ideal young lover. Placing her up on some remote balcony away from the audience reinforces that, whereas I want to undermine it.     

    Why undermine? Because she's a thirteen year-old girl! She's not some savvy, romantic ideal. She's young, smart, funny, conflicted, bursting with too many emotions at once. Listen to her lines from "Farewell compliment!" on. She ping-pongs from thought to thought, emotion to emotion, bubbling over with more than she can express, and not all of it is demure or sweet (this leads into a discussion of the "Juliet Trap," but that's for another post). It was great fun to allow my Juliet the freedom to match her metal ricochets with full physical freedom.

    (Note, too, that Juliet is wearing pajamas. Not some flowing night-gown, but what an almost-fourteen year-old wears to bed).

    Now, as I say, I'm sure I'm not the first to get rid of the balcony. But I went further with this idea than just putting Juliet on the ground floor. When Romeo ditches his friends, Benvolio says, "He ran this way, and leapt this orchard wall." So, I thought, Romeo climbed a wall? Why not leave him up there?

    Thus, for the first part of the scene, Romeo is up, and Juliet down. He descends before the initial love talk is done, well before her "Farewell, compliment" speech. And suddenly it was a scene I had never seen before.

    And yet, the window still allowed me to have moments like this one (III.v.): 

R&J Act III, Scene v - Matt Anderson as Romeo, Stephanie VanAlstine as Juliet. Photo and lighting by Jeromy Hopgood. Set by John Charles. Costumes by Melanie Schuessler.

Tybalt's Ghost

    Now that the show has closed, and the edits on the first third of the new novel are done, I can take some time to follow my weeks-old intent and talk a bit about show elements.

    The first I'd like to mention (mostly because I have this gorgeous photo) is Tybalt's ghost. It amazes me that, of the 16 productions I have been a part of and the dozen more I've seen, I'm the only director to make use of these lines from Juliet:

    O, look! methinks I see my cousin's ghost
    Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body
    Upon a rapier's point: stay, Tybalt, stay!
    Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.

    It seems a wonderful (and obvious) device to have dead Tybalt enter, covered "all in blood, all in gore blood" as the Nurse describes him, and search for Romeo. It is also great motivation for Juliet to drink the Friar's potion, which until that moment she has been talking herself out of doing. This is the second time I've made use of this moment, and it is frightfully creepy, especially in this latest production.

R&J, Act IV, Scene iii - Chuck Dvorak as Tybalt and Stephanie VanAlstine as Juliet. Photo and lighting by Jeromy Hopgood.