David Blixt

THE MASTER OF VERONA Audiobook

The audiobook for THE MASTER OF VERONA is finally here! After weeks spent recording, re-recording, even rewriting pieces to better flow from the lips, then more weeks as my producer put it all together with the help of an audio proofer and several listeners, it is now, at last, available to you.

You can purchase it on Audible or iTunes today, and on every major audiobook retailer next week. Meanwhile I'm looking into creating a link to buy it direct from me. But don't wait - get it today!

Huge thanks to my producer, Judith West, for guiding me through this process. Even with almost 30 years of professional acting behind me, this was a new skill-set, one that was both frustrating and joyful. The best part is that even I can listen to the final product and actually enjoy the story, only cringing over that word choice or that line delivery maybe once a chapter. Can't wait until January to start again with Falconer...

If you are not an Audible member, you can get a FREE copy of The Master Of Verona by clicking here. If you're already a member, please consider this a lovely gift for yourself or someone else this holiday season. 

Let me tell you a story...

VOICE OF THE FALCONER Cover Reveal!

The new ebook edition of VOICE OF THE FALCONER is out, revised and ready! The print version will hit the shelves in January, and next week I head into the recording studio to start work on the audiobook for it. Exciting!

Of all the Star-Cross'd books, this is probably the happiest. Yes, it's Verona, so there's always murder and intrigue. But there's so much joyful discovery as well. Characters from The Master Of Verona have matured and changed in the eight years since last we saw them. And this was where I got to start writing Cesco as a fully-fledged individual. Whereas before he was a McGuffin, an object of plots and plans, here he's the instigator of half the action and all the quips. This novel also sees Pietro recognizing a truth about himself, a distasteful one that makes him rethink his actions and motives. It's also the point in the story where I get to introduce young Romeo and even little Juliet, a newborn child who has no idea of the plots and dangers swirling around her.

With chases and races, grave robbing and incarceration, battles and taunts, many moments of mirth and one of true tragedy, this whole novel was a joy to write - and to revisit! So grab your copy today!

Shrewing Around

While I've been at work finishing new novels and recording audiobooks, I haven't been blogging a lot. Fall is always a madhouse for me, with tons of work to catch up on. Part of the reason is that each summer my life is consumed by Shakespeare as I return, like a swallow to Capistrano, to Michigan to perform on the stage of the Michigan Shakespeare Festival.

This year was particularly poignant, as it was the 20th anniversary of my wife and I meeting, on that stage. In honor of the occasion (and as a shameless marketing plug), we reprised those roles again, playing Kate and Petruchio in The Taming Of The Shrew. 

I gotta say, it's a harder show to do now. Not just because we're older, but because of the social climate. Even before the recent Harvey Weinstein et al revelations, there's a lot in the play that just does not work for a modern audience. Our amazing cast worked hard to overcome the problems by tackling them head-on, finding ways to be both true to the text but also not make the audience HATE the men in this play. The company lives together for the duration of the rehearsals and shows, and there were many evening gatherings where we talked about toxic masculinity and how best to be true to the characters while making clear this behavior was not okay.

In a way, I had it easy. Petruchio is always fun to play. His lines are bright and occasionally clever, and the wooing scene is one of the best love scenes in Shakespeare. And even the misogynistic speeches he has can be fun if you play them right. One night I said the line, "And do you tell me of a woman's tongue...? Tush, fear boys with bugs." I was immediately hissed by a member of the audience, and I loved it. That's the reaction his idiocy SHOULD get.  

No, it's the 'hawking', the keeping of food and sleep from Kate, that makes this play less fun to watch and perform. It works a little if he's mirroring back her own behavior, but less if we get the sense that she's a victim of Stockholm Syndrome. Yes, we can talk about what a leap forward Shakespeare's version is over the one where he whips Kate's back bloody and puts a salted horse-hide over her. Yes, Petruchio makes a point of saying, "Don't hit me and I won't hit you" while he hits almost everybody else. And maybe it was funnier when all female roles were played by men. But the abuse of Kate is simply unacceptable today - especially if this is a Comedy. 

What Jan and I found 20 years ago, and again this summer, is that it's best if it's a game, and he's merely teaching her the rules. Then, in the Sun/the Moon scene, she cottons on to the rules, and proves she can play the game better than he can. 

Where Jan and I ended was creating a partnership, where Petruchio and Kate basically grift everyone in the final scene, while at the same time playing a game of one-upsmanship with each other - a game she wins. 

Something new to this production was an observation by director John Neville-Andrews that most of the play isn't about gender, but about money. "I come to wive it wealthily in Padua. If wealthily, then happily in Padua." Everything is about dowry, and Tranio wins Bianca's hand for Lucentio by out-bidding Gremio. In the final scene, Kate's speech wins Petruchio a bet. And the whole scene is different if Kate knows that, and he gives the money to her. That was our solution - it was a grift, and these two clowns will now grift their way through Italy playing off of gender roles while being, themselves, equals. 

The director set very much in the Tudor era, with amazing costumes by Susanne Young. And there was a lot of fun had among the cast - these are some of my very favorite people to play with. We had audiences coming to us saying it was their favorite production of Shrew ever. And that's lovely. Because after doing it five times now, four of them as Petruchio, I think this is a play I can put to bed, happy to have gone out on a high note.

In truth, I like the Kate and Petruchio of the Star-Cross'd series better.  

 

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MoV 10th Anniversary Cover Reveal, Audiobooks, and More!

2017 marks the 10th anniversary of the release of The Master Of Verona. To mark the occasion, there's a new cover, new format - and, by popular demand, an audiobook! All of which drop in December.

First, take a moment to admire the gorgeous new cover by Kim Killion at The Killion Group. She's currently working on similar covers for the rest of the series, which will have an across-the-board facelift for the digital editions. Fans of the old covers, never fear, they'll remain on some print copies. But the larger trade paperback version of MoV coming in December will sport the new cover. 

So will the audiobook. I spent the Spring recording at the studio of my friend Judith West, and she's engineered a truly wonderful-sounding version of the story. It being my voice, I was afraid to listen to the finished product - only to find myself enjoying it! I'm sure I'll be hyper-critical of certain line deliveries and cadences, but I have to say, it was fun to listen to the story.

As if all of that isn't enough, there's an expanded edition of ORIGIN OF THE FEUD coming this month, and expanded markets for the ebooks of the Colossus series. I'm enjoying re-immersing myself in the world of Colossus, so I can finally finish the long-awaited third novel, WAIL OF THE FALLEN. 

I'll be back soon to blog more about all of this. So much is happening, it feels like a waterslide trying to keep track of it all. 

The Death of Benvolio

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, saying, “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’). For some they had complete texts, 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 Shakespeare’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 playwright. That’s just the way it goes.

Sometimes a Quarto would be published by the author himself, 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 First 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, 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. 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.

Just then, unseen by Benvolio, the two louts from the opening scene, Gregory and Sampson, 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? Well, she’s already told Juliet that she’s planning to send a poison to Mantua and have Romeo done in. And 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 feud. 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.

Tybalt's Ghost

It amazes me that, of the thirty-odd productions I’ve 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.

   

She says she sees the ghost! I cannot fathom why directors ignore this. She straight up says that she sees the ghost!

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. I’ve used this twice, and it’s frightfully creepy.

Yet I’ve only ever seen the ghost in my own productions. So perhaps I am simply insane. But I think this is one of the most powerful points in the show. The creators of West Side Story surely thought so – they staged an entire dream ballet around it.

Charles Dvorak and Stephanie VanAlstine

 

The Window Scene, or I Hate Balconies

You know what drives me consistently crazy? The preconceptions people have about Romeo & Juliet. So often after a student matinee a teacher or a parent will complain: “Why did you add all those sex jokes?” When we explain that we did not add them, they assure us we did. “I know Romeo & Juliet, and that’s not in there!” When we take them through the script line by line, they’re shocked. And then they tell us we shouldn’t have performed it the way Shakespeare wrote it.

I guess it’s important that students read Shakespeare, just so long as they don’t understand it.

We have to remember that Shakespeare knew that sex and violence puts butts in the seats. It worked for the ancient Greeks and Romans, worked for Shakespeare, works today. There are very few Shakespeare plays entirely devoid of dirty jokes (hell, it's what the Porter in Mac exists for). But R&J may be the most jam-packed with both sex and violence. 

But that's not the way the show is perceived. There are so many preconceptions about this show. And one of the biggest is the Balcony Scene. People speak of it as one of the ‘greatest romantic scenes in literature.’ This is because of the trap this show has become. It’s called ‘the greatest love story every told’ (I’ve even used that tagline in selling The Master Of Verona). But it’s a lie. In a great love story, they’d live.

So, if the Balcony Scene isn't about pure romance at its finest, what is the scene about, then? It’s about how wonderfully stupid teenagers in love are.

It’s also where I think Romeo redeems himself from the lovesick fool he was in the whole first Act. Because Romeo has fallen for the ideal of Romantic Love, of Chivalric Love. Love from afar. He loves Rosaline not for herself, but because he’s enjoying his anguish:

Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs;
Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes;
Being vex’d a sea nourish’d with lovers’ tears:
What is it else? a madness most discreet,
A choking gall and a preserving sweet.
He’s not in love with Rosaline. He’s in love with love.

This was the fashion, starting with the French tales of Lancelot and Guinevere, continuing through Dante’s passion for his Beatrice, right through Petrarch’s love for his unobtainable Laura. Mercutio mocks him relentlessly for this:

Alas poor Romeo! he is already dead; stabbed with a
white wench’s black eye; shot through the ear with a
love-song; the very pin of his heart cleft with the
blind bow-boy’s butt-shaft.

And later:

BENVOLIO
Here comes Romeo, here comes Romeo.

MERCUTIO
Without his roe, like a dried herring: flesh, flesh,
how art thou fishified! Now is he for the numbers
that Petrarch flowed in: Laura to his lady was but a
kitchen-wench; marry, she had a better love to
be-rhyme her; Dido a dowdy; Cleopatra a gipsy;
Helen and Hero hildings and harlots; Thisbe a grey
eye or so, but not to the purpose. Signior
Romeo, bon jour! there’s a French salutation
to your French slop.

It’s tempting to read French slop as a reference to Romeo’s mode of attire. But in this case I think Mercutio means this ridiculous notion of Courtly Love, made famous by French poets, where one aspires to love only from afar. In both MoV and Fortune’s Fool I reference a book by Andreas Capellanus entitled De Amore, which lists the 31 rules of Courtly Love:

1. Marriage should not be a deterrent to love.
2. Love cannot exist in the individual who cannot be jealous.
3. A double love cannot obligate an individual.
4. Love constantly waxes and wanes.
5. That which is not given freely by the object of one’s love loses its savor.
6. It is necessary for a male to reach the age of maturity in order to love.
7. A lover must observe a two-year widowhood after his beloved’s death.
8. Only the most urgent circumstances should deprive one of love.
9. Only the insistence of love can motivate one to love.
10. Love cannot coexist with avarice.
11. A lover should not love anyone who would be an embarrassing marriage choice.
12. True love excludes all from its embrace but the beloved.
13. Public revelation of love is deadly to love in most instances.
14. The value of love is commensurate with its difficulty of attainment.
15. The presence of one’s beloved causes palpitation of the heart.
16. The sight of one’s beloved causes palpitations of the heart.
17. A new love brings an old one to a finish.
18. Good character is the one real requirement for worthiness of love.
19. When love grows faint its demise is usually certain.
20. Apprehension is the constant companion of true love.
21. Love is reinforced by jealousy.
22. Suspicion of the beloved generates jealousy and therefore intensifies love.
23. Eating and sleeping diminish greatly when one is aggravated by love.
24. The lover’s every deed is performed with the thought of his beloved in mind.
25. Unless it please his beloved, no act or thought is worthy to the lover.
26. Love is powerless to hold anything from love.
27. There is no such thing as too much of the pleasure of one’s beloved.
28. Presumption on the part of the beloved causes suspicion in the lover.
29. Aggravation of excessive passion does not usually afflict the true lover.
30. Thought of the beloved never leaves the true lover.
31. Two men may love one woman or two women one man.

It’s as though the Romeo in Act I has studied this list, and is determined to stick to it. His friends see this and lament it, missing their witty and joyful friend who has been replaced by this stick-in-the-mud who declares himself incapable of dancing:

A torch for me: let wantons light of heart
Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels,
For I am proverb’d with a grandsire phrase;
I’ll be a candle-holder, and look on.
The game was ne’er so fair, and I am done.

Though their efforts to tease him out of his ‘love’ mood fail, Benvolio’s plan to make Romeo forget Rosaline succeeds. Because the moment he sees Juliet at the ball, Romeo changes, throws off the mournful cloak of Courtly Love and suddenly understands what true love is.

We know this because he does something unthinkable to a Courtly Lover – he acts! First he grabs the girl by the hand and talks to her, even stealing two kisses. Then he leaps her wall in the middle of the night to play Peeping Tom. His love for Rosaline is all talk, whereas his love for Juliet is genuine because it moves him to action!

Which brings us at last to the Balcony Scene.

Or as I like to call it, the Window Scene.

Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting in Zefferelli's R&J

In Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, no one says ‘balcony.’ Never. The word is not in the script. We call it the Balcony Scene because on the Globe stage there were two balconies that were used for just these kind of moments. But just because that’s the way they staged it doesn’t mean we should follow suit.

Instead, Romeo says window. ‘What light through yonder window breaks?’ Being interested in the script, this is something that’s always bothered me about this scene and, after years of snide remarks behind my hand, the last time I directed the show I finally did what I’ve long threatened: I got rid of Juliet’s balcony entirely. 

I’m sure I’m not the first. And I didn’t do it to shock anybody. I wasn’t trying to be postmodern, or to bite my thumb at convention – at least, not for the sake of biting my thumb. I did it to free the scene. Both from the weight of expectation, and literally free the actors to, you know, interact.

Here’s what often happens. Romeo comes in and hides. Mercutio and the boys chase him, tease him, then leave. He comes out, then sees her in the balcony and hides again, close to the audience. But if he’s going to see her, he either has to turn his back on the audience, or he has to be entirely across the stage – he’s got lots of asides before he reveals himself. So there’s always this physical gulf between them. And it lasts through the whole damned scene – unless you have him climb up to the balcony. But if he can do that, why does he need cords to climb down a two acts later?

So I decided to scrap the balcony, and put the window Juliet’s standing in on the ground floor. And it worked, worked so very well. 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 high on some balcony away from the audience reinforces that, whereas I always 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. 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’ where even the most talented actresses get caught up in playing the idea of Juliet instead of the character, which is much better. For some reason it happens much more with this character than any other). It was great fun to allow Juliet to match her metal ricochets with full physical freedom.

(Note, too, that in my last production Juliet wore pajamas. Not some flowing night-gown, but what an almost-fourteen year-old wears to bed. Just like in the first Spider-Man movie, where MJ is wearing pajamas, not a negligee. That’s the way a young girl dresses!)

So, by removing the balcony, I freed both Juliet and the audience.  

Now I’m the first to admit not every line is with me. Romeo has a reference to her ‘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.

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.’ I thought, Romeo climbed a wall? Why not leave him up there?

Thus, for the first part of the scene, Romeo was 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.

Which is to say, we’d shaken off the baggage of preconceptions, and could look at what these two people are actually saying.

Matt Andersen and Stephanie VanAlstine as R&J

The scene, of course, begins with Romeo seeing Juliet in her balcony (window). He tells us all about the stuff we can see for ourselves – she’s sighing, laying her hand upon her cheek – the same hand Romeo had held and tried to kiss during the party.

By rights, this is the moment when he should step out and proclaim his love, swearing by the stars and God in Heaven how deeply he adores her, in return for which she might give him a glove, some token to carry to the end of his days as he pines for her. That’s Courtly Love. It’s pretty stupid. But those are the rules.

Instead Romeo does something unthinkable in a Courtly Lover. He eavesdrops on her, listens to her most intimate thoughts – because they happen to be of him.

JULIET
O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.

Romeo even asks the audience if he should talk, or go on listening:

ROMEO
[Aside] Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?

JULIET
‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.

He listens until he can’t contain himself any longer and leaps out of the bushes, shouting, ‘I take thee at thy word!’

At which she screams, because there’s a Peeping Tom in her garden.

Seriously, the scene can and should be as funny as it is sweet. There are plenty of moments for both. The genius of Shakespeare is his ability to so utterly inhabit each character he writes. And we all remember being those kids! We remember the awkwardness of love – does she love me, what must he think of me, did I sound stupid?

I have four favorite comedic moments in the scene. The first two come relatively early, back to back, as she’s trying to compose herself after realizing he’s overheard her give away the game. She starts talking, and can’t stop. Think of a thirteen year-old girl going through the whole gamut of emotions – embarrassment, abandon, concern, trust, more concern, hope, more concern, posturing, self-doubt, chastisement of him, and more self-doubt. Imagine, too, a boy trying to open his mouth at each piece of punctuation, trying to get a word in edgewise:

JULIET
Thou know’st the mask of night is on my face,
Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek
For that which thou hast heard me speak to-night
Fain would I dwell on form, fain, fain deny
What I have spoke: but farewell compliment!
Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say ‘Ay,’
And I will take thy word: yet if thou swear’st,
Thou mayst prove false; at lovers’ perjuries
Then say, Jove laughs. O gentle Romeo,
If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully:
Or if thou think’st I am too quickly won,
I’ll frown and be perverse an say thee nay,
So thou wilt woo; but else, not for the world.
In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond,
And therefore thou mayst think my ‘havior light:
But trust me, gentleman, I’ll prove more true
Than those that have more cunning to be strange.
I should have been more strange, I must confess,
But that thou overheard’st, ere I was ware,
My true love’s passion: therefore pardon me,
And not impute this yielding to light love,
Which the dark night hath so discovered.

And here’s my next favorite bit of comedic timing. Belatedly, Romeo tries to play the lover, making grand oaths of love:

ROMEO
Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear
That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops--

JULIET
O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,
That monthly changes in her circled orb,
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.

Romeo is confused. He knows a Lover has to swear by something.

ROMEO
What shall I swear by?

And Juliet says the sweetest thing:

JULIET
Do not swear at all;
Or, if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self,
Which is the god of my idolatry,
And I’ll believe thee.

How beautiful is that? The only thing in the world that he could swear by is himself, because he is the only thing in the whole world that matters to her.

Being stupid, Romeo starts to do it:

ROMEO
If my heart’s dear love--

JULIET
Well, do not swear:

Shhh. Don’t talk, pretty boy. You’ll spoil it.

That comic timing right there, coming right after the most wonderful sweetness – that is some genius hilarity. It’s like that wonderful line Mary Louise Parker had on her second episode of the West Wing: ‘Maybe not so much for you with the talking.’

Next in the comedy goldmine comes a pair of lines that need no explanation:

ROMEO
O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?

JULIET
What satisfaction canst thou have to-night?

Self-explanitory - especially his totally innocent answer.

My final favorite moment comes towards the end of the scene, where Romeo and Juliet are in effect two teens on the phone late at night, complete with the You hang up / No, you hang up moment:

JULIET
I have forgot why I did call thee back.

ROMEO
Let me stand here till thou remember it.

JULIET
I shall forget, to have thee still stand there,
Remembering how I love thy company.

ROMEO
And I’ll still stay, to have thee still forget,
Forgetting any other home but this.

If played right, it is at least as funny as it is touching.

Just like the scene.

Balcony or no.

Letters to Juliet

I know there are desperate people in the world, seeking advice on how to live their lives. Dear Abby, Oprah, and Mr. Blue (oh, how I do miss Mr. Blue!) are only a few examples of how authority figures have hundreds, even thousands of people seeking their counsel. I have absolutely no issue with this, nor really a comment to voice. Find help where you can.

But there are some who don’t quite know where to turn. When she was younger, my wife Janice worked as a receptionist at a television station. On her first day she was told job was to "cull the real calls from the crazies". She was confused by those instructions until she fielded a call on her first day from a woman who had burned her hand and wanted to talk to Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman for help.

I suppose I have less of a problem with asking for a fictional character than with the choice of fictional character – wouldn’t she rather talk to Dr. Ross or Dr. Carter? Or even the guys from MASH? Someone with a passing knowledge of modern medicine at least? Not to knock Dr. Quinn – I’ve met Jane Seymour and she’s absolutely lovely. But seriously!

Which, in a roundabout way, brings us to the topic of people writing letters to Juliet. It’s been happening for several hundred years. The lovelorn, for the most part, writing to her for help. Two authors complied a book of letters written to Juliet in Verona, and the answers sent by the club set up just for that purpose. This was the book Letters To Juliet, which spawned the film of the same name. Again, kudos.

What I cannot for the life of me fathom is this – why are these people writing to Juliet? Why go to her of all people for help?

There are three distinct problems with their choice of advisor, which I will list in ascending order:

1 - She is a fictional character.

2 - She’s a dead fictional character.

3 - Seeing how she’s dead because of her love-life, why would anyone want her advice in the first place? Her love affair didn’t go so well.

So there it is, my frustration with people not thinking through their need for a guide in life. I have less trouble with Linus writing to the Great Pumpkin than I do with people writing to a fictional dead fourteen year-old.

I mean, really – who asks love advice from a fourteen year-old?

(For more essays and insights on Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, download ORIGIN OF THE FEUD - just $1.99! Exclusively on Amazon Kindle)

 

Loving Lady Montague

Once upon a time, I had this nifty idea: explore the origin of the Capulet-Montague feud by placing it in the historical context for Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet. They were real families, after all, mentioned by Dante in the Divine Comedy. And based on a little-noticed line at the end of the play, I found a cause for the feud that spurred this whole series of books.

The idea is this: Lady Montague is supposed to marry Lord Capulet, but elopes with Lord Montague instead. The deep friendship between Capulet (Capulletto) and Montague (Montecchio) is shattered, and the feud begins. Boom.

The unintended consequence of this was that I had to invent a character for Lady Montague, who has a mere two lines in the play. The servant Potpan has a more defined character than Romeo’s mother. Hell, unnamed musicians have more personality than she is given. So I had free reign.

I named her Gianozza, named for an early version of Juliet in Masuccio Salernitano’s 33rd Novel from Il Novellino. That story involves secret marriages, deaths of kinsmen, and a young groom fleeing to Alexandria. Because I was setting up a prequel to the famous story of star-crossed lovers, I liked the idea of using the names from that earlier version of R&J.

And somewhere along the line I ended up creating a character my readers love to hate.

Gianozza’s not evil. She’s not a schemer or a villain. Instead, in creating her character, I took her son’s main failing in the play and decided he learned it from her.

Gianozza’s in love with Love.

She’s especially fond of love poetry, and becomes fixated with the story of two doomed lovers Dante uses in The Inferno. She fails to notice that the lovers in question are in Hell. Instead she starts to idealize their doomed romance, with disastrous consequences. She aims to have a great love story just like theirs. And in so doing she sets up a great tragedy.

It all ties into the notion of Courtly Love, of love for love’s sake. Dante had his great love, Beatrice. She was not his wife. She was his muse. And when she died, he was able to love her completely, because his love wasn’t for the real Beatrice. It was for the idealized version of her.

Courtly Love is great for poetry. It’s just lousy for life.

In The Prince’s Doom we see Gianozza fifteen years after her marriage to Mariotto Montecchio. By now the marriage is strained. Not because her husband doesn’t love her. But because she’s no longer the center of attention. The only real attention she gets is from Antony Capulletto, still pining for her after all these years. Unconsciously, she stokes the feud, keeping it alive. There is a moment where Mariotto and Antony could reconcile, renew their friendship, end the feud. But Gianozza can’t help inserting herself once again, with disastrous consequences. Instead of burying the feud, she keeps them on the path that will end with them burying their children instead.

But she can’t help herself. She has defined herself through being loved by two men, men who are willing to fight and even die for her. She is the new Helen of Troy, the catalyst for great deeds. If she doesn’t have that, who is she?

A couple years ago Sean Graney adapted all the classic Greek dramas into a single day-long event which he entitled All Our Tragic. The title comes from a line that he gives to Clytemnestra: “All our tragic happens because we love someone we shouldn’t have.”

Truer words were never spoken. Because the best drama doesn’t come from hate. It comes from love.

 

(For more essays and insights on Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, download ORIGIN OF THE FEUD - just $1.99! Exclusively on Amazon Kindle)

 

12 Apostoli - A Star-Cross'd Christmas Short

Verona, Italy
8 December, 1328

    One of the favourite haunts of the Rakehells was a tavern with exquisite fare known as La Pentola – ‘The Cookpot’. Through its narrow half-door and large interior portal were wide rooms with long polished tables that would quickly be heaped with delicious foods.
    The story of its founding was made to amuse Cesco. One of the palace’s former cooks had departed in a fit of pique during that week when Cangrande had played at being dead and Mastino had the running of the palace. Insults to his person, the cook could have endured. But insults to his food, never. So, leaving his son to continue in the palace, Antonio Gioco departed in a fit of temper.
    He did not travel far, just a few streets away, around the corner of the Piazza delle Erbe, to an inn with an invidious reputation that happened to be run by his wife’s cousin. And here Antonio began cooking furiously. Within weeks the place’s reputation had changed. It now drew monied but common folk, those who had never dined at the palace and wanted to taste creations invented for the Scaligeri.
    No fool, the cousin-in-law, Mondadori, quickly altered the nature of his establishment. La Pentola was no longer a mere trader’s post and feeding trough for traveling merchants. The Cookpot was now a destination for travelers and locals wishing to eat noble foods.
    Mondadori was afeared, after Cangrande’s miraculous resurrection, that his cousin’s husband would return to the palace. Certainly Cangrande  asked. But it seemed the elder Gioco enjoyed being his own man, not tied to the vagaries of a lord’s whims.
    Business got an even more impressive boost some months later. There was a dish Cangrande particularly favoured, based on Hebrew cuisine, a baked onion salad. Though the younger Gioco did his best, he could not recreate the dish as it had been made at the hands of his father. So one day, to the astonishment of those within and without, the Scaliger had strode into the inn, sat himself at a trestle table, and commanded a bowl of it.
    From that moment onwards, La Pentola had to turn business away. Gioco introduced the people to Golden Morsels, those sugared bread delights that so fascinated the nobility. He offered lamb, duck, and boar in sauces that lingered in the memory, making the mouth water. He taught the trick of reversing a fish so the fat was rendered, leaving only the flavour. The costs of the spices and meats were huge, yes. But Mondadori was able to command magnificent sums – there was no price too high for someone wishing to eat as well as the Prince.
    In three years, the place had undergone a transformation. It was now well-lit and clean (the latter allowing the former), and decorated with magnificently carved tables and stools of the darkest hue, so brown they were almost black. They had been able to pay for a new façade, the banded red brick and cream marble that was so much the Veronese style.
    It was still an inn, attracting all types. This last month it had been filled to bursting for the wedding of Verona’s heir, and the ongoing revelry had hardly slackened their demand. When the heir himself appeared this evening, carting a sack and looking for food for himself and his companions, Mondadori was hard-pressed to find space for them.
    To his relief, Cesco grinned at him. “While we wait, I’ll just pop into the kitchens and say hello to Antonio.” And, his satchel over his shoulder, he vanished around the corner and down the stairs, into the kitchens built into the ancient Roman ruins beneath the building.
    The rest of the young men (some of them not so young), stamped their feet free of snow and clapped their arms. It was an unusually cold winter, and the snow had come early and lay heavily over the ground. Most of the time you could just sweep the light dusting away. But not this year, when the Adige had a thin skein of ice across it and little children were able to fashion snowballs for the first time in their lives.
    Clearly the Rakehells, as they were coming to be known, had spent the day in some active sport out-of-doors. They were covered in snow, blue of nose and red of cheek. Some Mondadori knew well – the Bonaventura twins, Petruchio and Hortensio; the Nogarola brothers Detto and Valentino; Cangrande’s bastard sons Bartolomeo and Ziliberto; and Prince Rupert, nephew of the Holy Roman Emperor, some of whose party were still lodged here.
    Others he knew only by their reputations. Fabio Scolari and Yuri Castorani, the hawk and the bear, adult mercenaries in Verona’s employ, whiling away their winter sporting and cavorting with Verona’s heir. The little sour-faced blond lad was obviously the young Capulletto boy, Thibault, who so often sparred with his uncle. And the last pair were Paduan by their accents, and possibly the eldest after Yuri and Fabio. The red-haired one had to be Signor Benedick. Which made the other one with the calm voice, happy face, and liquid eyes Salvatore.
    Cesco returned just as a table was cleared, the previous occupants chivvied to their rooms with an extra helping of wine. Still carrying his satchel, Cesco plopped himself down in the midst of the party and made idle talk until the wine, bread, and cheese had been served. “Don’t be gluttons with the bread,” he warned. “I’ve seen what Gioco’s cooking tonight, and we may never move again.”
    “This,” barked Yuri, “from a lad thin as a whippet.”
    “That would be a fine name for him,” agreed Fabio. “Isn’t whippet a smallish breed of greyhound?”
    “A bastardized breed,” agreed Yuri.
    “The bastard of a bastard,” chortled Thibault.
    Cesco snorted. “That jest is so old, I wonder it hasn’t turned to vinegar.”
    “Or piss,” said Petruchio sourly.
    “What’s that?”
    “Oh, my dear brother was quite inventive. He discovered that if you take a platter outside in this weather and urinate into it, you will soon have a sheet of frozen urine.”
    “That can be slid under locked doors,” added Hortensio, chortling. His twin smacked him across the back of his head. There were gravely amused looks all around as everyone eyed the fellows they lived with suspiciously.
    “Speaking of terrible ideas,” said Salvatore, pointing, “Ser Francesco, you should send that back to the kitchens. It’s gone bad.”
    The loaf of bread he was indicating was dark and hard, less inviting than the flaky warm bread along the rest of the table. Cesco glanced at it, then drew it closer. “It is dark as my heart, and somehow I will choke it down.” He clapped his hands. “Well, I'm certain you’re all desperate to know why I’ve asked you here. The fact of the matter is this – I have need of you all, my friends! The Capitano has deputed me to oversee the Christmas revels!”
    “That’s like asking Lucifer to oversee a Christening,” laughed Cesco’s half-brother Barto.
    “Or a tart to run a nunnery,” opined his other half-brother Berto.
    “Two sides of a coin, those two,” muttered young Petruchio.
    “Obverse and Reverse,” chortled his twin, Hortensio.
    “Quiet, dunce, or they’ll use those names on us!”
    “Speaking of coins, Obverse,” said Cesco (Petruchio rolled his eyes heavenward), “I’m to be given the dies for the minting of new coins. I’ve decided to have my own made. Any suggestions?”
    They all bandied about ideas, roaring more loudly with each progressively foul suggestion. It was only when the image of a greyhound killing a hare while tupping a goat was floated that they had to rein in their creativity – because the food had arrived.
    There was Apple Muse, boiled apples in almond milk and honey; there was a delicious platter of fawn-meat in a light applesauce; and a favourite of every true Veronese, boiled meats in Pearà sauce. A thick winter dish combining day-old bread, butter, marrow from the osso buco bone, meat broth, cheese, nutmeg, and a heavy dose of black pepper.
    In a season of feasts and revels, this was perhaps not the most lavish table set. But it was sumptuous, and the intimacy and simplicity of the place combined with the lack of ceremony to make it a thoroughly enjoyable meal.
    “Better than anything you’d get at La Rosa Colta,” said Detto softly.
    Cesco arched an eyebrow his cousin’s way. “Not anything.”
    It would have been perfect left there, but several men had to add their wit, and there were many jokes about fish. Blushing, Detto deflected the jests by turning to Cesco. “So, cos, what are these Christmas chores you need our help with?”
    “Well first, I was thinking of decorating the Advent Sunday trees with these apples,” said Cesco, dumping the contents of his satchel onto the long table. They were deeply red, hard and crisp to look at, and had the table not been replete with apple dishes already, they would have been devoured at once.
    “What’s special about these apples?” demanded Yuri suspiciously, lifting one.
    “They’re magic apples,” said Cesco. Everyone laughed, knowing the old joke. Detto blushed again. “No, truly they’re from the Garden of Eden. One bite and you will have the knowledge of good and evil.”
    Yuri stared at his, then slowly put it down. “I do not trust you, I.”
    “Aye?”
    “Aye.”
    Cesco grinned. “With good cause.”
    The moment the apple was still, it rattled and fell over. “Jesus!” cried Yuri, jumping backwards. The laughter was stifled by rattles coming from the rest of the apples, which were twitching and quivering on the table. One apple started to roll towards Prince Rupert, who speared it to the table with his knife. That stopped its approach, but not the rattle within. Noting the butt of the apple was not quite flush, he tugged at it. A beetle shot forth, darting off the edge of the table towards the shadowy back stairs.
    “See?” said Cesco lightly. “The knowledge of Good and Evil. Good without, evil within.”
    “Ser Francesco!” cried Mondadori, blanching in dismay as he ran over to collect the other rattling apples. “We cannot have beetles in the kitchen!”
    “Oh come!” retorted Cesco. “Where do you think I got him?”
    Several people in the inn eyed their dishes askance, unsure if he was joking. Mondadori rushed from one to the next, assuring them he was.
    “Obverse! Reverse!” Cesco snapped his fingers at the Bonaventura twins, who winced, realizing the names had stuck. “I have a task that can only be performed by you.” Their eyes became warily eager. “I need you to sit down and recount, word for word, you parents’ best fights. I have a mind to pen a Nativity play, but with the Virgin and her husband as Kate and Petruchio.”
    The table might have shattered into pieces, so loud was the roar of laughter that shook it. Embracing the task, the twins rose at once to portray the Saviour’s parents as their famously combative parents. Petruchio played his namesake, Hortensio their shrewish mother.
    “If you don’t like the ass, woman, dismount, and I’ll take my ease! These boots are murdering me!”
    “Good! I had them made just for that purpose. And I never said I didn’t like my mount.”
    “You complained of the ass!”
    “I was speaking of you!”
    “You adore my ass.”
    “Yes yes, the ass that launched a thousand ships. But though the ass is admirable, the ass that wears it is abominable. How much longer must I bear it.”
    “‘Tis I that bears it.”
    “My swollen belly proves you a liar.”
    “Look, he said we may refuge in that manger.”
    “I may refuse my refuge. A mangier manger there never was.”
    “You’ll manage that manger, then, to make it less mangy.”
    “Oh, I’m to clean, am I? What, is the divine child supposed to wait until I’m done tidying up?”
    “Hardly! If he’s divine, he can pop out and help with the sweeping!”
    “You mock his divinity?”
    “Not at all. I mock myself for falling prey to such a tale. ‘O, I love you, Guiseppe, I truly do. Don’t mind I’m pregnant. The baby belongs to the Lord.’ Which lord, I ask. Because if it’s that nobleman with the fancy camel up the road—”
    “I’d never fancy his camel as much as I fancy your ass, dear.”
    Howls, tears, fists pounding the table. They carried on through the birth, responding as much to the heckling Rakehells as to each other. At last the Savior was born, portrayed by Cesco crawling out from between Hortensio’s legs and proclaiming, “Here I am! Where are my gifts?”
    Yuri, Fabio, and Salvatore played the three wise men, offering gifts of lint, dust, and spit. They sang scandalous versions of Jacopone da Todi’s Christmas rounds, shocking the ears of some other guests but gaining the approval of even more. They danced and cavorted, flapping their arms and clapping their hands, singing until their voices creaked and croaked.
    “Bring me some water,” cried Cesco, coughing from too much mirth. “And in that fine glass vessel!”
    Mondadori looked stricken. The Cookpot’s glass pitcher, made in the Holy Land, was a truly treasured piece. Yet he could not deny Verona’s heir.
    He was relieved to see when he returned that the table was more ordered, with Cesco returned to his seat and the others gathered around.
    “So, here I am, the Savior at table surrounded by my twelve closest friends. I seemed to have aged prematurely, leaping from birth to Last Supper in a single night. And I haven’t even performed any miracles!”
    “Loaves and fishes!” shouted Barto and Berto, still hungry.
    “Not if we’re starting with that loaf,” sneered Thibault, pointing at the untouched dark loaf beside Cesco.
    “And wait until we’re at La Rosa Colta to multiply the fishes!” added Yuri loudly.
    “Are you planning to raise the dead?” asked Salvatore.
    “Or walk on water?” snorted Rupert.
    “No no. For my first miracle, I shall turn water to wine!”
    “You mean wine to urine!” shouted Benedick.
    “We needn’t see you do it, though,” added Thibault wryly.
    Cesco plucked up a chunk of unbroken bread that had been sitting by him, untouched through the meal. He tore it in half over the clear pitcher, so that chunks of it fell to disturb the water. “Take. Eat. This is my body—”
    “Then your body’s a corpse,” mused Fabio, staring at the bread.
    Cesco frowned. “Fine.” He dropped the butt of bread he was holding into the pitcher.
    “If that’s your body,” laughed young Petruchio, “then you’re planning to walk on water after all!”
    They were chortling and teasing when suddenly Berto shouted, “Look!”
    Amazed, the watching Rakehells saw the water turn cloudy, growing darker and darker until the liquid was unmistakably the colour of wine.
    “Cesco, what did you—?”
    “How did you—?”
    “What in Heaven’s name—?”
    Cesco waited for their amazed gasps and questions to end. Then he poured from the pitcher into each other their cups. “This is my wine. You are my apostles.” He gazed around at them. “I wonder which of you will betray me.” He let that linger for a time, then grinned. “But until we find out, bottoms up!”
    Some time later, after Cesco had made Benedick pay for the meal from a borrowed purse and everyone prepared to depart for their next bit of sport, Detto drew near his cousin. “How did you do it?”
    He would not answer anyone else. But for his childhood playmate, Cesco could not resist a teasing answer. “How do you think?”
    “It was the bread. But how?”
    “Simplicity itself. Yesterday I soaked the bread in wine, then let it dry. When we arrived, I went downstairs and asked Gioco to help me set up my ‘miracle’.”
    Detto grinned. “Well done. For a moment they were convinced. I think Thibault still is.”
    Cesco laughed. “He thinks I’m divine now, does he?”
    “Infernal, more like.”
    “Either will do.” Shrugging, Cesco wrapped an arm about his cousin’s shoulders as the pair of them headed for the door. “Thank Gioco, will you, Mondadori? And thanks for the use of your pitcher. It was – miraculous!”
    Thinking the real miracle was that the glass vessel had survived, Mondadori waved them out. “Glad to be of service, my lord. You and your twelve apostles are welcome any time.”
    There was an unforeseen effect. The story spread swiftly that night – of the playacting, the singing, and the ‘miracle’. Some recognized it for what it was, others scoffed or crossed themselves. But some believed. People began to come to the inn, hoping to find the twelve new apostles there.
    Mondadori was a businessman. As with Gioco, he knew a good thing when he saw it. Within two days, he’d commissioned a new sign to hang above his door, effectively renaming his inn: 12 Apostoli.

 

For more Star-Cross'd shorts, pick up VARNISHED FACES, on sale December 22nd!