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William Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet Santa Cruz Shakespeare 2018 First Quarto edition of Romeo and Juliet, 1597 (The Folger Library) Dramaturgy Resources prepared by Ariane Helou CONTENTS Playbill Notes . 1 Sources and Influences . 3 When are we? . 4 Where are we? . 6 What’s in a Name? . 8 Who are we? . 11 Government / The Prince . 11 Religion / Friar Lawrence . 11 Women . 12 Juliet, Lady Capulet, Nurse . 12 Benvolio and Tybalt . 13 Men . 16 Capulet and Montague . 16 Romeo

and Mercutio . 16 What are we doing? / Swordplay, Music, Dance. 16 DIRECTOR’S NOTES FOR THE 2018 SEASON PLAYBILL LAURA GORDON Most everyone knows this play. We’ve either seen it on stage or on the screen or have read it Romeo and Juliet is an enduring classic containing some of the most gorgeous and well known poetry written in the English language. It’s a high stakes love story fueled by the exuberance of youth and the thrill of first love, full of risk and danger, as two young people try to navigate their emotions and the ancient grudge that exists between their families. And, spoiler alert, Shakespeare even tells us in the sixth line of the play that this “pair of star-crossed lovers” will take their life. And yet we watch it again, almost willing it to have a different outcome this time. I think one of the reasons this play has continued to resonate so fully with audiences is because of the extraordinary potential that

exists in these two young people: the potential of their love, certainly, but also the potential of the lives they could leadthe potential that their relationship might actually heal the feud between their families. Shakespeare has us revel in the joy of this young love. We invest in the hope, and we mourn the loss of it   1 And as we “hold, as ‘twere, the mirror up to nature,” I don’t think we can help but see reflected there the deeply divided time in which we’re living; how ancient grudges stand in the way of finding common ground; how senseless shootings and an opioid crisis have left too many parents outliving their children. Whether a young person tragically takes their own life or has it taken from them, we grieve not only their death, but also the loss of all that glorious potential. DRAMATURG’S NOTES FOR THE 2018 SEASON PLAYBILL ARIANE HELOU A young nobleman of Verona falls in love and secretly promises to marry his beloved, against the objections of

their parents. We saw this intrigue last season in the comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona; in Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare reimagines the premise as a tragedy. The first printed edition of Romeo and Juliet (1597) introduces itself as “An Excellent conceited Tragedie . As it hath been often (with great applause) plaid publiquely” This is hardly false advertising; the play has been a hit with audiences since its debut. A second quarto edition, substantially fuller, followed in 1599 and is the basis for the version most widely read and performed today. There are many reasons for Romeo and Juliet’s immense and lasting popularity. The plot centers on a high-stakes romance between young people rebelling against parental authority; the action is propelled by dance, music, and several fight sequences. These are woven together by Shakespeare’s rich poetry and inventive prose, which takes flight in sonnets, in Juliet’s soaring imagination, and in the comedic arias of Mercutio and

the Nurse. Romeo and Juliet has a reputation as a great love story. But what does “love” mean in this play? Familial love resonates in the relationships between children and their parents or surrogate parents (Friar Lawrence, the Nurse), and between cousins (Juliet and Tybalt, Romeo and Benvolio). Love manifests itself in the loyal, potent friendship of Romeo and Mercutio. Love moves swiftly; Romeo avows his passion for Juliet moments after he has been sighing for the unseen Rosaline. Juliet pursues Romeo to satisfy her own desires, but also to resist surrendering to her parents’ designs. (It is perhaps no accident that Juliet’s name derives etymologically from Julius, as in Caesar; she is ambitious to shape her own destiny.) Romeo and Juliet are in love with each other, but they are also in love with love, heady and headlong. Love’s twinhatealso propels the drama. The mutual passion of Romeo and Juliet explodes against the background of a violent feud that disrupts the peace

of an entire city. Romeo and Juliet is also a story of a civic body in distress, on the verge of self-destruction. If the deaths of the young lovers do “bury their parents’ strife,” they entomb along with it the lives and hopes of a generation of Veronese youth. BEFORE THE PLAY BEGINS The Montague and Capulet families have been in conflict for years. Their feud has divided the city of Verona; violence erupts in the streets, with no resolution in sight.   2 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S ROMEO AND JULIET: SOURCES AND INFLUENCES The primary source for Shakespeare’s play is a narrative poem by Arthur Brooke, The Tragycall Historye of Romeus and Juliet (1562). Although Shakespeare seems to have worked primarily, if not exclusively, from this source, he was building on several literary generations of a story about rebellious teenagers who found love across opposite sides of a family conflict. Brooke’s poem is based on a novella by Matteo Bandello, published in Italian in 1554;

Brooke may have been working from the Italian original, or from a French translation by Pierre Boaistuau (1559). Bandello’s tale, moreover, was based on a novella by Luigi da Porto (ca 1530). Both Bandello and da Porto locate the story in the the real, historical Verona at the turn of the fourteenth century, under the rule of Bartolomeo I della Scala (whose name Brooke Latinizes as ESCALUS), during the period of intense partisan conflict between the political factions of the Ghibellines (aristocratic families who supported the expanding power of the Holy Roman Emperor) and the Guelphs (supporters of the Pope). The earliest literary reference to two prominent Veronese families embroiled in this battlethe Ghibelline Montecchi and the Guelph Cappellettiappears in the Purgatorio of Dante’s Divine Comedy (ca. 1314; see pp 8, 10) Centuries later, Bandello and da Porto recounted the tale of the starcrossed lovers Giulietta Cappelletti and Romeo Montecchi These medieval and early

Renaissance versions of the story, however, are based on variants of the tale that go back to antiquity. The most famous of these is arguably the myth of Pyramus and Thisbe. Shakespeare knew this story well (the comprehensive version is told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which he read and referenced extensively in his writing), and he put it to use as the play-within-a-play of A Midsummer Night’s Dreamprobably written shortly after Romeo and Juliet. Pyramus and Thisbe are two young neighbors who fall in love with each other despite their fathers’ mutual hatred and the impenetrable wall that stands between their two houses. When they finally escape from home to consummate their love, Thisbe finds a lion, fresh from its hunt, at their meeting place. Terrified, she hides herself, but leaves her scarf lying on the ground, which the lion tears and stains with the blood on its mouth and paws. Pyramus arrives, sees Thisbe’s mangled and bloodied scarf and, believing that she has been

killed, immediately takes his own life; Thisbe emerges from her hiding place, finds Pyramus’s body, and uses his sword to kill herself. In Midsummer, Shakespeare uses the tale to poke fun at actorly conventions and not-great playwriting; in Romeo and Juliet, the story unfolds with elevated language, high stakes, and a tragic outcome that is announced from the outset of the “two hours’ traffic.” One key contribution by the Renaissance adapters of the Romeo and Juliet story including Shakespeareis raising the stakes of the central conflict and thus of the central relationship. The feud between the families of Pyramus and Thisbe seems to be contained to their households. The Montague-Capulet rivalry, however, affects the entire city of Verona and invokes the Guelph-Ghibelline struggle that divided the whole Italian peninsula.   3 Pyramus and Thisbe, Gregorio Pagani (late 16th c.) WHEN ARE WE? Shakespeare most likely wrote the play around 1595-96 (the first edition,

published in 1597, states that the play has already been performed several times). The story as told by Brooke and Bandello seems to be taking place in the late 13th or early 14th century, when Verona was under Scaligeri rule; however, as he does with most of his plays, Shakespeare treats the narrative as if it were contemporary, and finds ways of making a story from medieval Catholic Italy feel immediate to his early modern English audiences, for example by anglicizing many of the names. Our production takes an approach that is in some ways similar to Shakespeare’s. The setting evokes a historical past of another era, but one in which we can recognize ourselves; much as Shakespeare did, we are bringing our modern voices and selves to a tale from another time. To be clear: this production is not a “period piece” What we are trying to do, rather, is to allow the story to both speak from its own time and to reach us in ours. What does it mean to set a play roughly in “the

Renaissance”? Renaissance is a bit of a loaded term for scholars; it primarily refers to European culture of the 15th-16th centuries, but some historians extend it earlier or later. There is a general consensus that the period begins in Italy in the fifteenth century, with the rediscovery of ancient Greek philosophy, literature, and science that had been lost to the West since the fall of the Roman Empire. The word “Renaissance” is French for “rebirth”; some scholars, finding it too focused on recovering an imaginary past, eschew it altogether in favor of the more forward-looking “early modern.” The truth is that the period we’re talking about looked both forward and backward. The Renaissance was characterized by, among other things, a fervor to recover the lost cultural heritage of antiquity; at the same time, it was a period of great innovation, exploration, and scientific discovery. Rather than get mired in the details of a specific time and place, it may be   4

helpful for us to consider what “Renaissance” means aesthetically or feelingly. How does it shape who we are, and how does it inform how we see the world? This document attempts to address some of those questions (especially the sections “Who Are We?” and “What Are We Doing?” pp. 11-18), but these will also be part of ongoing conversations during the rehearsal period. If you have additional questions, please don’t hesitate to ask! Another important aspect of “when we are” in this play has to do with the compressed time frame of the action. Time is a thematic concern throughout the play, beginning with the CHORUS’s advertisement of “the two hours’ traffic of our stage,” echoed by the NURSE’s careful reckoning of Juliet’s age and childhood (1.3), and by JULIET’s own impatience with the passage of time (2.5, 32, 35) Yet the action of the play unfolds over the course of just a few days. (The following timeline is taken from the Arden 3 edition, pp 25-27;

abridged) Sunday Morning Afternoon Evening Night 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 A street mêlée, the Prince, the families, Romeo and Benvolio Paris and Capulet; then Romeo, Benvolio, Peter Juliet, Nurse, and Lady Capulet discuss Juliet’s readiness for marriage Mercutio and the masquers Romeo and Juliet at the ball 2.1 2.2 2.3 Later 2.4 2.5 2.6 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Mercutio and Benvolio outside the Capulets’ home The “balcony scene” Friar Lawrence in his garden agrees to marry Romeo and Juliet Juliet sends Nurse to meet Romeo] Mercutio, Benvolio, and Romeo with Nurse Juliet quizzes Nurse Friar, Romeo, Juliet; the lovers marry offstage at the end of the scene Tybalt kills Mercutio, Romeo kills Tybalt Juliet is longing for night; Nurse brings news of Tybalt’s death Romeo, Friar, Nurse in the Friar’s cell The Capulet parents and Paris Tuesday Dawn Afternoon Evening Night 3.5 4.1 4.2 4.3 Romeo parts from Juliet; she defies her father Friar with Paris and Juliet The Capulet household

prepare for the wedding Juliet’s soliloquy before swallowing the potion Wednesday 3:00AM Dawn Afternoon 4.4 4.5 5.1 Thursday Dawn 5.3188-310 The Prince, Capulet parents, and Montague Monday Before dawn After dawn [9:00AM Noon Afternoon Evening Capulet, his wife, Nurse, servants prepare the wedding breakfast Juliet is found unconscious and presumed dead Romeo in Mantua heas of Juliet’s “death” and decides to join her; the apothecary’s shop is shut because Wednesday is a holiday Late evening 5.2 The Friar learns his letter to Romeo could not be delivered After midnight 5.31-187 In the cemetery and Capulet vault in Verona   5 WHERE ARE WE? Panoramic view of the city of Verona (wikipedia) Fair VERONA, where we lay our scene, is located in the Veneto region in the northeast of Italy. It has been continually inhabited since at least the 6th century BCE, and came under the governance of Rome in the first century BCE. During the Middle Ages it was a powerful

independent city-state ruled by the Scaliger dynasty (also known by their Italian name, Della Scala). Verona flourished under their rule in the 13th-14th c, but family in-fighting and deadly sibling rivalries diminished their power; by the late 1300s, the Scaligeri were losing the goodwill and political support of the Veronese people, and in 1405 Verona was annexed by the Republic of Venice, where it more or less remained until the turn of the nineteenth century. The Verona of our play is ruled by the PRINCE as an independent city-state; that may suggest that the action is taking place during the Scaliger era, or elseas is frequently the case in his workShakespeare was simply less concerned with the details of political history than with telling a compelling story. Because of the city’s structure and the presence of the largest and best-preserved Roman amphitheater in Italy after the Colosseum, Verona has been nicknamed “Little Rome.” Today Verona is a UNESCO World Heritage Site

and a popular tourist destination (Your diffident dramaturg lived there in the summer of 2010, and you can see her photos and read her recipes, historical digressions, and text that is only sometimes embarrassingly gushy: http://la-buongustaia.blogspotcom/2010/08/iam-mens-praetrepidans-auet-uagarihtml)   6 Mantua (Italian: Mantova) is a smaller city than Verona, located further south in the region of Lombardy. It was also an independent city-state during the Renaissance, ruled by the Gonzaga dynasty in its heyday and famous as center of arts and culturemusic, theater, and painting in particular. (Photos of Mantua, too, in the ancient blog: http://labuongustaiablogspotcom/2010/09/mantua-me-genuithtml) The Lombardy region of Italy, showing Mantua (Mantova); you can see that it shares a border with the Veneto to the northwest Mantua is about 27 miles south of Verona. Today it’s a short ride by car or train, but for our characters, it would take at least a day to reach on

foot, and several hours on horseback. Both because of the travel time and because Mantua was an independent city-state under different governance than Verona, it would have been a safe place for ROMEO to live in exile, yet difficult for JULIET to travel to.   7 WHAT’S IN A NAME? The names of the two feuding clans, MONTAGUE and CAPULET, derive from real Veronese families: Montecchi and Capelletti. Dante refers to them in The Divine Comedy, placing them in Purgatory among other prominent Italian political families; although Dante does not describe them as specfically feuding with each other, his pairing of the two names may have been suggestive to later writers. (Dante knew Verona well, and wrote about it often; after his exile from Florence, he sought refuge at the court of Bartolomeo I della Scala (see pp. 3, 10) The Capulet and Montague servants all seem to have Biblical or religious names, in contrast with the classical and Italianate names of the play’s noble

characters. (This seems to be true throughout the play; Capulet’s party guest list consists of classical names, and the only(?) other Biblical name we hear, Susan, belongs to the Nurse’s daughter.) ABRAM is a variant of Abraham; PETER, one of Jesus’s Apostles; GREGORY, derived from a Greek word meaning “shepherd,” was the name taken by 16 Popes (an English form of the name, but evoking Catholic Italy; Shakespeare’s audiences would have been very familiar with Gregory XIII (1572-85) and his calendar reform). (In our production Sampson and Balthasar have been absorbed by other characters, but their names follow the same trend.) It makes sense in this period that the servants would have religious namesdrawn from a tradition familiar to many, regardless of whether or not they had a formal educationwhile the aristocratic names are largely drawn from classical history and literature, texts to which they would have had more exposure. (As we learn in 12, Peter is functionally

illiterate, meaning he has likely not received any formal education.) The other players, alphabetically: BENVOLIO means “good will,” and for the most part the character lives up to his name. While most of the other principal characters’ names are found in Brooke’s poem, Benvolio is a name invented by Shakespeare. Note that he is etymologically (and in terms of personality) the opposite of Malvolio (“evil will”) in Twelfth Night. JULIET is a feminine, diminituve form of Julius, a name associated with a powerful Roman political family and its most famous scion: the dictator Gaius Julius Caesar. The Julii claimed to be descended from Rome’s legendary forefather, Aeneas, who was thought to be the son of the goddess Venus. Thus Juliet’s name evokes both the generative power of love and an ambition for personal or political dominion. Friar LAWRENCE’s namesake is a 3rd-century saint, born in Spain and martyred in Rome. (His name in Spanish and Italian is Lorenzo, from the

Latin Laurentius, meaning someone who has been crowned with a laurel wreath in recognition of a military or artistic victory.) When the local government asked him to turn over the Church’s wealth to the Romans, Lawrence asked for three days to get the money together, during which time he redistributed the Church’s wealth to the city’s poor. The Romans were not pleased; they ordered a man-sized gridiron to be constructed for Lawrence’s torture and execution. Legend has it that after hours of suffering over hot coals, he quipped, “I’m done on this side. Turn me over!” He is the patron saint of cooks and comedians. (Also of students, librarians, brewers and winemakers, poor   8 people, glass workers, laundry workers, tanners, armorers, and more. Plus he protects against fire. Busy guy, Saint Lawrence) MERCUTIO is named for Mercury, the multivalent Roman god (more-or-less equivalent to the Greek Hermes). Mercury was the god of commerce (indeed, they share an

etymological root: Latin merces); he also guided travelers, both at crossroads in the living world, and as the leader of souls entering the afterlife (with the best job title ever: psychopomp). Mercury is a trickster god; in his origin myth, as an infant he steals a herd of sacred cattle from his big brother Apollo, then invents the lyre, displaying a precocious intelligence and a sneakiness to rival that of Papa Zeus/Jove. Many of these qualities emerge in Mercutio’s boundlessly inventive imagination (as in the Queen Mab speech); his quick wit, which even imminent death cannot cause to falter; and his mercurial temperament. Mercury, Giambologna (1580) Juliet’s NURSE is usually addressed as “Nurse,” but a clue to her name is at 4.45, a line cut from our production. CAPULET Come, stir, stir, stir. The second cock hath crowed, The curfew bell hath rung, ’tis three o’clock. Look to the baked meats, good ANGELICA; Spare not for cost. NURSE Go, you cotquean, go [. ]   9

Although LADY CAPULET is also onstage at this point, LORD CAPULET seems to be addressing the NURSE, as she is the one who responds. It is possible that “Angelica” could be another female servant, but none is indicated in the stage directions. But ANGELICA could be the NURSE’s given name; this is quite possible given the context of the dialogue, as well as the trend noted earlier of servants in the play having primarily religious names (see p. 8) (In fact, just as the NURSE is a person of humble origins intimately placed in an aristocratic household, it could be argued that the name ANGELICA bridges the worlds of commoner and nobility; it is a popular Italian name because of its “angelic” meaning, but it was also the name of one of the central female characters in Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso: Angelica is the princess beloved by the hero Orlando, whom he pursues around the world. For more on Ariosto’s epic and its significance for our work, see below, pp. 14-15)

PARIS shares his name with the French capital city, and with a young prince who, in Greek myth, was at least partly (maybe mostly) responsible for starting the Trojan War. When asked to judge a beauty contest in which the contestants were three earth-shatteringly powerful goddesses, he awarded the prize to Aphrodite because she promised him that the most beautiful woman in the world. The only trouble is that the woman was already married; her name was Helen, and when she left with Paris (willingly? maybe, maybe not), her husband Menelaus and his allies launched a thousand ships to try to bring her home from Troy. In our play, Paris expects to be awarded the most beautiful woman in Verona; Juliet, unlike Helen, resists successfully. The name of THE PRINCE OF VERONA is never spoken in the play, but Brooke calls him ESCALUS, and that name is retained in Shakespeare’s stage directions and in the dramatis personae of many modern editions. The name ESCALUS derives from Della Scala, the

name of the actual ruling dynasty of medieval Verona (see above, pp. 3, 8); Bandello sets the tale of Romeo and Giulietta during the reign of Bartolomeo I della Scala (d. 1304; patron of Dante Alighieri, see above p. 3) Coat of arms of the della Scala family, Lords of Verona. (Scala means “ladder” in Latin and Italian.) O ROMEO, ROMEO, where does your name come from? Romeo is the name of the male protagonist in Bandello’s novella; in Brooke’s poem, he is called Romeus, but Shakespeare returns to the Italian form. “Romeo” evokes an association with Rome; appropriate perhaps, since Verona has been called “little Rome” since antiquity, and since JULIET’s name echoes that of a Roman imperial dynasty. TYBALT (alternately spelled Tibert or Thibaut) is the name of a character in the medieval French mock-epic Roman de Renart, which parodies 12th-century feudal society and court culture by casting animals in various societal roles: the king is a lion, and Renart the fox is a

trickster knight constantly at odds with his fellow barons, Isengrim the wolf and Tibert/Tybalt   10 the cat. (If you think this sounds kind of like the plot of Disney’s Robin Hood, you’re not wrong.) Tibert/Tybalt is the perpetual object of Renard’s antagonism and trickery, but he proves himself to be just as clever as the fox, escaping from traps and even managing to best Renard on the odd occasion. Shakespeare’s TYBALT seems to embody some of Tibert’s feline qualities, stealthily observing the Montague gang at the Capulet party and reacting angrily, claws out. The Roman de Renart was a hugely popular text, adapted and translated and reimagined dozens of times during the 12th-14th centuries; by Shakespeare’s day it was less current, but still extremely well known. Contemporary audiences would for the most part have recognized the name and understood MERCUTIO’s mocking references to TYBALT as “king of cats” (in our case, Queen of cats!) and “ratcatcher.”

Tybalt the Cat steals a sausage from Renard the Fox. Le Roman de Renart (manuscript, 14th c) WHO ARE WE? GOVERNMENT The Verona of the play is ruled by a PRINCE, likely a stand-in for one of the Scaliger rulers (see above, pp. 3, 8, 10); someone who inherited his position rather than being elected He is the sovereign of an independent city-state; the powerful families of the city would have supported him by serving in his court in administrative and/or military positions, conducting trade, or representing Veronese interests in other cities and regions. The stability of Verona and thus the Prince’s poweris endangered by the Montague-Capulet conflict, with the “rebellious subjects” inciting violence in the streets and threatening to tip the entire civic body into chaos. RELIGION During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Italy was a staunchly Catholic region, under the cultural and sometimes political governance of the Church of Rome. Catholicism was embedded into everyday life, and

participation in it was reflexive, if not compulsory. (At the time that Shakespeare was writing, the mandates of the Counter-Reformation movement meant that Italians were under even more pressure to conform to religious orthodoxy, or risk facing the Inquisitiona response to the emergence and rise of Protestantism across Europe during the sixteenth century.) Religious institutions are represented in the drama by FRIAR LAWRENCE. A friar (from the Latin frater, “brother”) is a member of a mendicant monastic order; as we can tell by his numerous invocations of St. Francis, Lawrence is a Franciscan Friars, like monks, take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. But unlike monks, who live in self-sufficient seclusion, friars work among laypeople and offer their services in support of a larger   11 community or public good. Friar Lawrence is not a hermit; he is an integral part of the Veronese community, and a mentor figure to Romeo whom he addresses as “pupil mine” and

“dear son.” The young people of Verona are free to visit him (even Juliet, who is otherwise constrained to her home). Friar Lawrence may even see his role in the Romeo-Juliet affair as an extension of his calling to do service to his community; for what greater service could he do than to bring about a peace between the two warring households? WOMEN Various stages and facets of womanhood are put on stage in this play. JULIET, the protagonist, is very young; in Brooke she is sixteen years old, but Shakespeare reduces her age to 13. The fact that she is only just entering adolescence raises the stakes for the question of her marriage and what would be a (very) rapid initiation into adulthood and adult responsibilities. Yet it is not this transition per se to which Juliet objects; it is her lack of agency or choice in the matter. Given the oportunity to choose her own marriage partner, and thus shape her own destiny, Juliet does not hesitate. (See the note above, p 8, on the origins

of her name and what this might suggest about her character.) As the only living child of Lord and Lady Capulet, however, Juliet must also know that her marriage is necessary to produce an heir to ensure the continuation of the Capulet line (and more to the point, the continuation and consolidation of its wealth). Modern viewers and readers of the play may see something optimistic in Juliet’s choosing to pursue Romeo, invoking the power of love to end the families’ feud. But it must be acknowledged that Juliet’s actions are also selfish, and that flouting her family duty is disrespectful. In other words: she is a teenager But despite her youth, Juliet is often the cleverest person in the room, and she demonstrates her intelligence largely through her imagination and use of language. Among other characters in the play, only Mercutio can match her inventive and drawn-out imagery. A noblewoman of Verona. Cesare Vecellio (1598) If Juliet is a creature of excessof desire, of

imagination, of languageher mother LADY CAPULET seems to be one of deprivation. She barely participates in the NURSE’s reminiscences over Juliet’s childhood, and this is, in all likelihood, because she played a limited role in Juliet’s upbringing. We know from the Nurse’s monologue in 12 that she was Juliet’s wet-nurse (meaning that she had a baby around the same age as Juliet, and nursed   12 both infants because Lady Capulet could not or would not). The Nurse would have been responsible for most other aspects of early childhood rearing-up. Marriage, however, was the purview of the noble mother. (This was not uncommon in that period) Juliet is not the only one caught in a moment of transition; her maternal figures, too, must learn how to navigate their new responsibilities. The Nurse’s job as Juliet’s primary caretaker is coming to an end, as Juliet is faced with the prospect of marrying and leaving home; however, it may have been expected that she would go with

Juliet to her new home to help care for Juliet’s children. At the same time, Lady Capulet’s responsibility is just entering its arguably most active phase, as she is the only person in Juliet’s orbit with the social capital to coach her into adulthood, marriage, and her new responsibilities as head of her own household. Finally, in our production we are entering some exciting territory with our swordslinging ladies BENVOLIO and TYBALT. While this is not exactly typical behavior for women during the Renaissance, it turns out there is in fact some historical precedence for this! There are several high-profile examples that Shakespeare and his contemporaries would have recognized. Rather than suggesting that we imitate any in particular, I offer these historical models in the hope that they will give us a spectrum of possibilities from which to choose. Mary Frith (1584-1659), aka Moll Cutpurse, was a denizen of the London underworld, a thief and brawler known not only for her scant

regard for the law, but for her tendency to wear male clothing and engage in typically male behavior such as brawling in the streets or smoking tobacco. She was the subject of a comedy by Shakespeare’s contemporaries Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton, The Roaring Girl (published 1611 and performed a few years earlier). But it’s important to keep in mind the difference in social class between her and our characters; Moll was born to a working-class family, and her activities are hard to separate from her need to earn or steal money. This is not the case for Tybalt and Benvolio, who come from aristocratic families. Title page of the first edition of Middleton & Dekker’s The Roaring Girl (1611)   13 Another historical example closer in status to TYBALT and BENVOLIO is Catalina de Erauso (1592-1650), aka the Lieutenant Nun, born to a noble Basque family in northeastern Spain. Her father was a military commander, and as a child she trained alongside her brothers. She

was sent to a convent to be educated, but finding herself unsuited for the religious life, as a teenager she ran away from the convent, cutting her hair short and disguising herself in men’s clothing. From there she traveled through Spain and eventually made her way to the Americas, working first as a servant, then as a soldier, rising to the rank of Lieutenant. Catalina lived as a man, having affairs with women (and dueling with their jealous husbands) until she was arrested in Peru; to escape execution, she revealed that she had been born a woman and raised in a convent, andbecause she had never had a sexual relationship with a manwas a virgo intacta. A physical examination by nuns confirmed this, and Catalina was sent back to Spain under the protection of the bishop. Catalina then proved a master os selfpromotion Capitalizing on the miracle of her virginity despite having lived among men for so many years, and on her military deeds in service of Spain’s colonial interests,

Catalina published her autobiography and in 1626 petitioned the Spanish Crown to reward her efforts, requesting both financial reward and a dispensation to continue dressing and living as a man. She succeeded, and lived out the rest of her life in Mexico. (If you want to learn more about swordswomen in Golden Age Spain, check out this research site by Mary Curtis, a doctoral candidate at UC Davis: http://destreza.us/history/women/indexhtml) Catalina de Erauso, attr. Juan van der Hamen (early 17th c) Finally, there are two important fictional examples that nonetheless would have been extremely well known to Shakespeare and his contemporaries. One of the most popular and influential literary works of the Renaissance was Ludovico Ariosto’s heroic epic Orlando furioso (1532), or “Mad Orlando,” which tells of the adventures of one of Charlemagne’s knights (Orlando, or Roland as he’s known in the French tradition). It is an extraordinary artistic achievement, drawing on the great

classical and medieval poets; it was also a popculture phenomenon. People read it all over Europe, and in addition, portions of the story   14 were recited or sung by street performers; it was adapted as plays, ballads, paintings, operas and ballets (17th-18th century), puppet shows, and more. Think Harry Potter-like levels of popularity and cultural saturation (appropriate, since J. K Rowling borrowed liberally from Ariosto!). Orlando furioso was translated into several languages, including English in 1591 in a verse translation by John Harington; Shakespeare almost certainly would have encountered it, as well as Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1596), which adapts portions of Ariosto’s poem. In fact, the Claudius and Hero plot of Much Ado About Nothing is taken directly from Orlando furioso (the tale of Ariodante and Ginevra). And this massively popular work of fiction featured not one, but two female knights among its principal characters. Marfisa and Bradamante are

badass fighters by any measure; they are also devoted to their families and loved ones, virtuous and pious. Unlike Moll or Catalina, they dress in women’s clothing and adhere to typical gender-normative behavior when at home among their families; however, when they roam as knights-errant, they wear men’s clothing and armor. Of the two characters, Bradamante is the more prominent. She is engaged to marry a young knight named Ruggiero; Marfisa is Ruggiero’s twin sister. Bradamante and Ruggiero are the legendary ancestors of Ariosto’s patrons, the Este family, rulers of the Italian city-state of Ferrara). (Marfisa and Ruggiero, incidentally, are Muslims of African descent Ruggiero converts to Christianity in order to marry Bradamante; Marfisa, upon learning that their father was Christian, converts as well, but never marries.) Marfisa and Bradamante, like all good knights, get plenty of opportunities to rescue damselsand sometimes gentlemenin distress; Bradamante rescues her

boyfriend Ruggiero on multiple occasions. Although normally it would be hard (if not impossible) to justify using semi-mythical figures as blueprints for characters in a non-mythical world, Marfisa and Bradamante, like all well-crafted literary characters, are fully realized and believable. They have a lot to offer us that is potentially useful. Moreover, given how epically popular the Orlando furioso was, they were very much part of the cultural imagination of the Renaissance, so much so that in the early-to-mid sixteenth century, “Bradamante” became a popular girls’ name in Italy. And it’s certainly likely that many young women readers of Ariosto yearned to follow in the footsteps of these heroines; some may even have dared to attempt it. “Valorous Bradamante,” Antonio Tempesta (1596)   15 MEN I’m dividing up the discussion of the play’s social world into “Women” and “Men” not because I personally want to be super essentialist about the gender

binary, but because that is, at some level, how the play is structured, and it’s important to realize that even as we’re re-gendering some of our characters. Italy was a strongly patriarchal society. Fathers, as heads-of-household, had complete authority over their wives, children, and servants; this was a system that originated in ancient Roman law and was reinforced by Catholic doctrine. Thus we can understand LORDS CAPULET AND MONTAGUE as more than just fathers of children, but as sovereign rulers of their families. Their will is law Capulet’s berating of Juliet in 35 can appear shockingly cruel to modern audiences, as does LADY CAPULET’s apparent unwillingness or inability to defend her daughter. In the context of the time and culture, though, it’s important to understand just how transgressive Juliet’s disobedience is, and how Lady Capulet almost certainly lacks the freedom to contravene her husband. Romeo and Juliet dwells in a world that is pretty strictly

homosocial: that is, a world in which men and women are so divided that their primary social relationshipsaside from marriage and immediate familyare exclusively with members of the same sex. This characterization was true of both England and Italy during the early modern period. This division into separate homosocial environments typically meant that young men had the freedom to move about freely in the world, travel, and participate in public life, while women were confined to the domestic sphere. We see this clearly as JULIET is nearly always at home waiting for the action to come to her; as Shakespeare wrote the play, she is also without female peers. (In our production, we’ve given her a close girlfriend in TYBALT, but Juliet still does not have access to the same degree of freedom as her cousin.) Even though the gender divide is somewhat mitigated in our production, it’s worth paying attention to this contrast between mobility and restriction of movement throughout the play.

Meanwhile, the gangs of MONTAGUE AND CAPULET YOUTHS roam the streets looking for adventure. In Shakespeare, it goes without saying, these bands consist exclusively of young men. We’ve altered it slightly by throwing a female Benvolio and Tybalt into the mix, but there may be a certain degree of masculine presentation or posturing for them, and the result is that our Veronese streets will likely still feel homosocial and predominantly male. In the world of the Renaissance, friendship between men was seen as an idealized form of devotion to another persona mirror of the selfas well as a lasting union. Such friendships were rhetorically framed as demonstrating a mastery over the sexual temptations offered by women, even though they were often erotically charged. (Many scholars and theater artists have argued that such is the case for Mercutio and Romeo, but we can discover and decide for ourselves what kind of relationship they have in our world). WHAT ARE WE DOING? Swordplay, dance,

and musicnot necessarily in that orderfigure largely in the play, both on stage and thematically. This is no accident; all of these skills were essential to a courtly education. Music was one of the “seven liberal arts,” the core of Western education from antiquity until early modernity. The liberal arts were divided into two clusters: the trivium, which consisted of elementary topics (hence “trivial”) grammar, rhetoric, and logic; and the   16 quadrivium, comprising what we think of as more scientific subjects: arithmetic, geography, astronomy, and music. Music though, grouped among the mathematical (rather than verbal) disciplines, was understood as a form of scientific knowledgean understanding of harmonies and rhythms based on ratiosas well as an art. When Mercutio makes fun of Tybalt in 2.4, saying “she fights as you sing prick-song” (i.e musical notation) he is making the point that Tybalt treats fighting as a mathematically precise skill, like a student,

without the fluidity and improvisation of a master artist. This is a pretty cruel jab. Mercutio is describing Tybalt’s fighting style as stiff and studied; the ideal is for it to seem effortless. Indeed, the idea of apparent effortlessness was so important to Renaissance culture that the Italians had a word for it: sprezzatura. We might translate it as “ease” or “nonchalance.” It means doing something that demands great technical skill singing or playing an instrument, reciting a poem, dancing, or doing swordplaywithout betraying how much effort you put into practicing or executing it. It’s part of what makes a great performance. The term sprezzatura was popularized in part by the publication of Balthasar Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier (1528), a handbook for how to succeed at court (without looking like you’re really trying). The book is written as a dialogue among Italian courtiers and poets, and one of the central questions of their debate is whether a

courtier ought to be more proficient in letters and arts, or in arms and military exercises. The characters debate this among themselves, but there is no question that both are important. Italian noblemen of the period (and many Englishmen too) would have been trained in swordsmanship and riding in addition to their academic studies. Dance, too, would have been a part of their courtly education. (Noblewomen would have been educated in music and dance, but generally not in the use of arms; Catalina de Erauso, p. 15 above, was a rare exception) Music, swordplay, and dance all demand sprezzatura. These activities were part of everyday life for Italian nobility during the Renaissance, especially for those whose professional success depended upon their winning the good graces of their Prince. In a sense, the Renaissance nobleman is always on stage, curating his performance for his patron and the public. We see this particularly clearly with Mercutio, whose wit caries him through virtuosic

arias of improvisation. We also see it with the Montague and Capulet servants in the opening scene. They are not only participating in their masters’ feud; in a way, they seem to be impersonating their lords, taking on the role of the courtier through wordplay and swagger.   17