Juliet

Shakespeare's first tragic heroine was a teenager, barely a teenager, a cloister yet wonderfully assertive and resourceful young woman, a girl who knows what she wants and gets it, gets him, but then tragedy strikes and she takes her own life. Before she's even seen her 14th birthday, she dies. But her story and her legacy are immortal. We're talking about Juliet. You're listening to Shakespeare's Shadows, the podcast that waves together interviews with actors and academics to delve into a single character in each episode. I'm Emily Roam, creator of Shakespeare's Shadows and I am beyond thrilled to be, with the release of this very episode, relaunching the podcast. Yes, so this is the long-awaited season two premiere of Shakespeare's Shadows. As many of the devoted listeners know I put the podcast on hiatus when I started graduate school, I had the joy of earning a master's degree in Shakespeare studies and the Bard's hometown, strapped for the Pond Avent. That was back in 2017. The world's been through a lot since then and is still going through a lot. Theater has been through a lot. But here we are, toward the end of the year when we're celebrating 400 years, since the printing of Shakespeare's first folio. It's finally the right time to bring back Shakespeare's Shadows. Thank you all so much to everyone who has supported the relaunch, especially those who contributed to the Kickstarter campaign. All right, on to Juliet. She is the heartbeat of her place. She is the person who drives her plot. I mean, she's extraordinary, you know. She only leaves her parents' house to go to church, alive or dead, you know, whether she's going there to be secretly married or to confession or to be barren. But she's incredibly resourceful and hugely brave. And I am increasingly persuaded the more that you look at the plays very early reception. So in the 50s, 90s when Shakespeare writes it and then as it's performed through the 17th century, it is Juliet that really speaks to the audiences. That's Dr. Sophie Duncan, who is a professor at Magdalene College at the University of Oxford. This past April, she released an excellent book called "Searching for Juliet, the Lives and Deaths of Shakespeare's First Tragedic Heroin." So Sophie's an Oxford now, but she grew up in Shakespeare Central. And it was there that inspiration struck for her book. I've always been fascinated by Juliet. But I think my interest got serious. About 13 years ago when I was working as a tour guide at Shakespeare's birthplace in my hometown of Stratford, on Averon, where I know you also spent a really happy year. Yeah. And this is somewhere that, as you know, people come from all over the world to visit to come to the birthplace. And at that point, when I was working as a tour guide in the house, at the end of the tour, when you enter it into the garden, you could request a scene from a troop of actors who, they were amazing and they worked at the house. Now, because people come from all over the world, that means lots of different nationalities, different levels of familiarity with Shakespeare. But consistently, the play people requested was Romeo and Juliet and the scene that we know as the balcony scene. And I found that even if people had never seen the play, read the play, studied the play, they knew the story. Yeah. New the story, regardless of their familiarity with Shakespeare. And I think what I found also fascinating is it's the image of Juliet translates so universally that if you put a girl on a balcony, or basically if you stood a girl on a chair and stood someone else underneath, people would go, "Oh, it's Romeo and Juliet." Even more than, you know, give a boy a scarlet's hamlet, people know that story. Yes, Romeo and Juliet is one of those stories that for many people, it feels like it's always been a part of their lives or that they've always had at least some awareness of the story and don't remember when they first heard it. Because of that, I'm not going to do a full on synopsis of the play like I do in most episodes. Super short version, girl meets boy, girl and boy get married and secret because of their feuding families. Miss hap and tragedy strike, leading to girl and boy, each killing themselves, feuding families decide to apparently reconcile the end. We have two fabulous actor guests on this episode. Let's hear from each of them about their early memories of the play. It's sort of starting to all meld together like you were talking about that I was like I know I saw a production at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre middle school, early high school maybe and then honestly the one that like blew my mind with the Bozlerman. I think for a lot of 90s kids that was like such a huge introduction to Shakespeare and whether or not you agree with the cutting or what it says about the play itself to this day all this looks so fondly upon that movie. That was Alejandra Escalante. She played Juliet at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland Oregon back in 2012. And our other actor guests played Juliet this past spring in the Northeast regional tour of Shakespeare, a tour mostly to schools and other venues like public libraries produced by Shakespeare and company, which is based in Lennox, Massachusetts. Here's Neyri Poole. I can't remember exactly what grade I was in whether I was like in seventh grade or like somewhere in middle school, Regent University was putting on a production of Romeo and Juliet. And so I went to see that with a group of classmates and ever since then I had wanted to play the role. Do you have any particular memories of why that role stood out to you? Why you latched on to that when you first saw it? I would say it was very passionate, but just and I am sure anyone who's read the play or has seen the play as Juliet is known to be a passionate character, but it was really passionate. I know for me at the time I wasn't used to seeing people who looked like me in the middle of Shakespeare work and when I saw Regent University's production and you know you see you kind of meet all the characters before you meet Juliet. So all these characters had run across the stage, all these people were a lot doing this, that and the other. And then the moment comes where they're like revealing who Juliet is. And I was like oh my god because it was gorgeous dark skin black woman with long braids and I was just like oh man I just hadn't imagined it before. So then when I saw her, I was like oh wow like I think that's something I can do too and she was just so I think the passion is really what pulled me into it and the curiosity of the characters well really snatch me in. Yeah yeah and now you know I bet your performance this past spring I would be surprised if it didn't impact some young people the same way. So weird to come full circle in that way. One thing I'll mention in the interest of fall disclosure, I had the wonderful opportunity to do some work with Neyri and the rest of this Romeo and Juliet cast when I collaborated with Shakespeare and Company on a performance called Shakespeare at the Museum this past May. I'm sharing that just so I don't misrepresent this interview with Neyri as that of a totally impartial journalist but also as a big shout out to Shakespeare and Company and those actors for being game to try out some promenade style pop-up theater with me at the museum where I was working before I moved to the Boston area. So we'll hear more from Neyri and Alejandra about their productions a bit later. I'll mention to that in this episode more than a typical episode of the podcast we'll spend some time delving into the legacy of the character the afterlife of Juliet. But right now let's get into her origins. Shakespeare's sources for the play. This isn't a story Shakespeare invented but like with a lot of his plays, one he adapted. Here's Dr. Sophie Duncan again. By the time it gets to Shakespeare it's been through several different iterations in Italian literature where it's kind of treated as historical fact. Dante mentions the Montague's and the Capulets as the epitome of fuding families but Shakespeare's most immediate source is a long poem by Arthur Brook which is about Rameis and Juliet and the three big differences from Shakespeare's play. Whereas in Romeo and Juliet we have the very famous prologue where the chorus explicitly blames the parents so it is the feud which kills the children and nothing but their children's deaths can bury the parents' strife. In Brook he's not at all sympathetic. Rameis and Juliet deserve what's coming to them because they listen to their lust, not their parents and they listen to a friar, their Catholic which is also a crime in Brook's eyes. In Brook the lovers are together for much longer and the crisis only comes when Juliet falls pregnant and the third big difference is that Shakespeare makes Juliet younger than in Brook's. Juliet is 13. And I think probably because of the kind of dynastic marriages, you know, ranged marriages that we know went on between European royal houses in Shakespeare's lifetime. Sometimes we think, well, to us it's obviously very shocking that she's 13 and she's secretly getting married, but it was normal in Shakespeare's time and it wasn't. Yeah. He's making the point by deliberately making her incredibly young and setting her within a room of where extremely young marriage is normal. So yeah, she would have seemed very young from marriage to even Shakespeare's first audiences. Absolutely. She would have been really shockingly young. Shakespeare himself marries at 18 and his bride and half-way is in her mid-20s. And again, I think through history that's sometimes been portrayed as eligible young Shakespeare marries slightly long in the tooth and half-away. In a kind of Jane Austen sense, you know, that 26 is impossibly old. In fact, Anne is bang on normal for a first marriage outside of royalty or very powerful mobility. And William is a little precocious, a little premature. One thing I want to respond to that you've mentioned, the difference in the prologues. I wonder if that's just something that's made the story so enduring and appealing to young people. Now that Shakespeare, I don't know if it's, I don't think it's fair to say he sides with the youth in the play, but that it's just much more sympathetic to the young people and, you know, doesn't immediately blame them for all the chaos and the tragedy that young people can look at this and really relate to some of those multi-generational relationships in this play. The way Shakespeare did it. I think that's really perceptive. We tend to think of the teenager as an invention of the 1960s, you know, the kind of the generation gap. And that being the point at which the disgruntled rebellious adolescence appears in culture, but no, absolutely. He's very, very astute about adolescence. So although Juliet is 13 in this play, she's often played by actresses in their 20s, especially, of course, in professional, you know, non-student productions. And because of this, Juliet can often end up reading as older than 13 and performance, perhaps as like an older teen. So I was rather struck by Neiri's delightful performance that just believably delivered a gitty young teenager. She is 13 in the text. It says she's not yet 14. And it's like, it's even so specific down to when my birthday is. And I think one of the small details that really drove it in was maybe the doll that I had to have. Govyn Lowbauer, who is our costume designer for the production, handmade the doll from scratch, and it looked exactly like me. And I can't remember the exact time I stopped playing with dolls. Maybe I was 12 or somewhere around then, but just having one that looked exactly like me reminded me of when I was like five years old, and I had like the brandy barbie, like the Chris Lee that you said. And it just having something like that that I felt so attached to. I think was a way to really pull in a small detail of her youthfulness and just how much sort of playfulness that she still had, but also like, you know, she wasn't touched by some of the cynicism around her in a way that, you know, pulled her youth from her. So I think we landed there because that's what the text said, and we wanted to keep it as close to the story as possible. Yeah. I think one moment in that first scene you have where it really felt real and believable that she's 13 is whatever your reaction was to, you know, your mother, Lady Capulet, talking about marriage and what's the line? It's an honor, I think, not of. And I think, you were kind of like grossed out a little bit. Most production thought was like, "Eel, oh boy." Maybe Juliet has just grown out of the age of, "Oh, boys have kudis." Getting married made genuinely be something she's not thinking about yet. But then along comes Romeo. So I mean, people have debated plenty whether Romeo and Juliet are actually in love or whether this is teenage infatuation, whatever you want to call it. What is your view, Alejandra, on why these two people are so instantly and strongly drawn to each other? You know, I've actually fluctuated with this one for, and it's so, I'm a fairly cynical person just to be very honest. I'm a very cynical person. But I was walking my dog this morning, and for some reason I thought about this exact question. And I don't know why, but today, I feel like they're in love. Like, yeah. Like they are star-crossed lovers. They are why this story was meant to be told about these two people. And it's not the greatest love story of all time, right? And very, very tragically and horribly. And maybe the love story is not what you walk away from the play with. But I believe today that, yes, they were meant to be that somehow the universe put these two people together and they got a chance. And that chance was just that one whatever butterfly effect in the universe didn't work out, but that they are in love. I like to think that while I'm not always a religious person, I am a very spiritual person. And I think so much of who they were was fated to each other. Romeo is a prophetic dreamer in this. His dreams come to be. They are what end up happening. He's a prophetic dreamer. Juliet's a clairvoyant and looking and seeing something or seeing things are not there, but knowing what they are. There is a quality about these two people that is slightly leaning into another realm or just like touching the veil of like other things floating around them. So much of their languages revolving around what's fated in the stars for them. So I think their attraction to each other is fated in some ways. But I also think in very immediate ways, they experience infatuation in love through each other in a way that they have an experience with other people. From forth of fatal lines of these two foes, a pair of star cross lovers take their life whose misadventured pitius overthrows, does we, their death, bury their parents' strife? The beautiful passing. Alejandro's Romeo and Juliet production took place in 1840s all to California. The stage production at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival was adapted into an audio production released by Blackstone Audio. That's what you just heard a bit of. You can get the whole audio production on Audible. This is what Alejandro said about what that setting meant for her when she was pretty much at the beginning of her acting career. Other than being able to at least bring a very personal part of my history to this play that's a million miles away from me in some ways, being a very young actor, not quite knowing what I was doing was very helpful in that like, you know, I could find little ways to ground myself if there was a little bit of Spanish language. There was a little bit of Spanish culture. If there was a bit in the web, I'd open the background. I understood that as I have it at so that could kind of help me in Juliet, you know, form our own little bond. Yeah. So that was super helpful. I think in the sense that, and I again love Buzz Lerman, love modern productions of Shakespeare, no problems here about any of that, but in that it was helpful in that we didn't have to wrestle with well if they have cell phones. I can't think of it as a bit or just simply, gosh, she has to wear this big poofy dress and maybe she doesn't feel that comfortable with stupid big poofy dress at this moment. Especially I think for someone like Juliet who is so like a little caged bird is so even those kind of huge hoop skirts felt like that, you know, it felt like like you're so isolated and don't really have any friends and you don't really see anyone outside of your servants in your nurse. Only allowed to go out to go to confession or whatever. And God forbid you're ever by yourself or without a way. So I did find just that setting in that super comfortable and again helpful at that time for where I was in that stage of my career at the very very beginning to start to develop ideas and find ways to meld me and the character. Photo from this OSF production of the two title characters appears on the cover of the book, Latinx Shakespeare staging US intercultural theater. That book was published this past January and is by Carla Deligata, who was the academic guest on the second-ever episode of Shakespeare's Shadows. I do recommend you check out that book in Carla's website, latinicsshakespears.org, which archives latinics led or latinics themed Shakespeare's staging. That site has a detailed webpage for each genre of the place, but gives Romeo and Juliet its whole own webpage. Noting that, Romeo and Juliet is the most adapted Shakespeare play for latinics cultures. Now, yes, this may be in part because Romeo and Juliet is very popular play at large. Carla Deligata also points out, of course, the major influence that West Side Story had. I asked Alejandra for her take on why Romeo and Juliet has been so popular for latinics theater makers and audiences. I don't know. I don't know, but what I will say is the story. I've done a lot of Shakespeare. I love a lot of it. There are some that are not my favorite. That story, I think it's hard to deny its greatness. Just the story itself. And I don't, because I try to shy away from saying things like, "Oh, it's got lots of heat or it's very melodramatic or get in the way like it's all on, no, no, no, I'm not going to say any of that." All I'll say is that it is hydrama. It is well told drama. So I think that kind of, it adapts so well to any kind of, you know, like any culture can kind of understand that. And I think for me, I'll just say it's in debt to what a great story it is and how well it's told. Yeah. I will garner to guess why. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, but that's a good sense of it. And only from my limited view of things, I'll share that I lived in LA for nine years, including undergrad and including, you know, friends of Latino, Latina background. And at least for those people I know, family is so important to them. And for some of them, the idea of being able to move away from LA wasn't an option for them or wasn't really an accepted idea because, you know, couldn't move away from your family. So I would I wonder. So what do you do as someone? Yeah. So just as someone, you know, who comes from different cultures myself, how much the intergenerational story and dynamics that are portrayed in here, you know, have connected. And I think that was a huge part of the Alta California thing of, of also being immigrants in a new world and trying to both adapt and assimilate, but also you want to hold on to your culture, which is incredibly tricky for any immigrant, but, you know, Latina who are so close, especially, you know, I mean, that's not Mexican, that's even the central American, they're so close and have such a close connection to the border, have been here for such a long time that are still never quite here, who have some of us been here before any, Europeans ever stood put here. It's it's it's this like strange dichotomy of you always wanting to, you know, that whole like never being white enough, never being brown enough and like trying to figure out what that balance is, but certainly the ties to family and not wanting to disappoint family, sticking around with family till the end, you know, finding good partners for your family, wanting to make sure your family's taken care of all obviously huge, huge stories and very important within the Latina community for sure. Finding a good partner for your family. Well, in the world of Romeo and Juliet, that's something certainly on the minds of the Capulets. Juliet's parents have selected a young man named Paris for her to marry and things don't go as they've planned there. Just what were things like in Elizabethan England for young women of Juliet's social status when it came to marriage? How much say did they have in the selection of a husband? Sophie shed some light on that for us. Selection of a marriage partner and how much say a child should have in it was a very live issue in the Elizabethan period and you get the full range of views. There is an increasing sympathy for the victims of enforced marriage. There's actually a play in the early mountain period called the miseries of enforced marriage and there is a sense that children shouldn't be forced into a marriage that is absolute anathema to them, but on the other hand, the children are being told in conduct manuals that you should obey your parents. There's a lot of tension there. At the same time, there's always running through discourses on marriage and awareness that an unmarried young woman could be a real problem for her family. You see it particularly in works on clandestine marriage, the secret marriage of the type Romeo and Juliet go through. Juliet would be expected to marry to her parents liking and above all with her parents permission to do it publicly and to do it advantageously. I think it is interesting that in Shakespeare's depiction of Lord Capulet, we do see him go extremely rapidly, as most things happen in the play, from a reasonable father who even when presented as he is in his first appearance in the play with the super-eligible Kendall Paris as a suitor, you know, related to the prince says no, no, not yet, you know, too soon, mad, although so early made, give it another two years. He's expecting a very eligible man to wait quite a long time to marry his daughter. And that certainly would have seemed to the early modern audience as extremely reasonable because Juliet is just a baby. Yeah, but then we get the same later on where he's insisting. Absolutely. The effects of grief and sleep deprivation and I think real instability so after tibal dies, where suddenly he's like, yes, we'll just get on with this. Alejandra reflected back on figuring out the family dynamics with her castmates Vilma Selva and Elijah Allen Sander. Certainly we had talks, Vilma and Elijah and I about what our family dynamic was like, all of that kind of good stuff that you do with good actors and you have your little chat to that. But at the same time, I think the text or let me say the lack of text between them, I think is super-super telling that first scene, one three, between Juliet and the nurse and her mom, I think is so telling of like mom being so uncomfortable and Vilma did such a beautiful job in playing that. I'm like, I don't know how to approach this kid. I don't talk to her this way. I'm not back close to her. I don't know what I'm saying, whereas the nurse is like, honey, you know, you and I go way back, explain this to you, whether or not that totally embarrasses Juliet. But I just think there was a formalness to the relationship between Juliet and her parents. Like I said, a teaming lack of communication that I found interesting, especially in comparison to her extreme comfortability with the nurse was really telling to me. So it's like, okay, who's actually raised this person? Here's another perspective on this mother-daughter relationship from Neiri. I think in a couple of other spaces like people imagine that Juliet is not close with her own biological mother and that maybe that her biological mother doesn't have enough care for her as her daughter. But I found in our production that I really still wanted the love of my parents and still deeply cared about what they thought even though looking at the story on paper, you can imagine her parents to be these rich people who throw their daughter off on the nurse. All right, so that gives us a sense of Juliet's relationship with her parents. But let's get back to Juliet and her Romeo. In particular, their meet cute that features a shared sonnet. If I profane with my unworthiest hand, this holy shrine, the gentle sin is this. My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand to smooth at rough touch with a tender kiss. Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, which mannerly devotion shows in this. Or saints have hands that pilgrims hands do touch and palm to palm is holy palmers kiss. I've not saint slips and holy palmers too. I pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer. No, then, dear saint, let lips do with hands. They pray, grants thou less faith turn to despair. Saints do not move, though grant for prayer's sake. Then move not, on my purse effect, I take. That was, by the way, from Alejandro's production again. So a sonnet, shared by two actors in a dramatic work. Just how common or uncommon was that when Shakespeare wrote this play? It is extremely unusual. There are other the kind of sonneteering moments in Shakespeare, certainly, but this is very early and very striking because as you say, it's a shared sonnet. Now, if you want to read more about the poetic style in Romeo and Juliet, I'm going to take a moment to plug Hesterly Jeffrey's new Cambridge edition of the play because her introduction and notes are superb. And everything you want to know, and certainly everything I know about love poetry in Romeo and Juliet, I get from Hester. That aside, I think it's wonderful and really exciting moment in the play. And again, Juliet is the one who's doing all the exciting and unconventional things with a fairly conventional line of imagery where Romeo describes, you know, she's a shrine, he's a saint, he's a pilgrim, and this is language he will come back to throughout the play and Juliet is really lifting that language and playing with it. Thus from my lips by thine, my sin has perched. And have my lips the sin that they have tuck? Sin from my lips. Oh, trespass, sweetly urs, give me my sin again. Are you kissed by the book? So they have their first kiss. And then when she says to him, you kiss by the book, which I think is a, it's depending on how you read it, whether it's returning to the kind of punning language they've been using, also the slightly teasing him about the way he kissed. It's a wonderfully self-possessed moment for such a young and inexperienced girl. Yeah, yeah, that it's probably a compliment, but you know, if she were more experienced, then maybe it wouldn't be as much of a compliment. I think it's certainly cheeky. Yeah, yeah. It's quite something for her to kind of have her first physical romantic experience and be able to kind of articulate a response to it. Okay, get ready for your heart to melt, like really melt, you know, if thinking about Romeo and Juliet doesn't do that already, Alejandro's co-star in that OSF production is now her real-life spouse. And she kindly shared what it was like to fall for each other while playing Shakespeare's Star Cross lovers. I have somewhere in here a beautiful black and white photo that we keep meaning to get framed of our Romeo and Juliet. We'll put up. We have lots of photos of it everywhere, but you know, yeah, it was an extremely, yes, the play changed my life, meeting that person changed my life. And it was, you know, it was a long run, it was whatever, a 10 months long run. And so I think quite a few people within the cat were not too excited about getting together. Oh, yeah. These two break up. This is going to be a disaster. And, you know, we were too young to care about that stuff, so we thought that. And it worked out. It worked out. But it was, it was beautiful in that I trusted this person implicitly. So when I went into that balcony scene, it wasn't like, oh god, I have to nail this balcony scene because it's a bell balcony scene. And I hope I could just like look into his eyes and be like, I'm all right. I'm going to breathe. He's got my back. I've got his back. All we have to do is tell the truth. There are words, you know, and it felt effortless. It felt in the best way, not in like a robot not acting way. Just effort, just easy, ready to go. Lark scene felt so freeing, so wonderful, so that when you did get to the other side of things where things were just falling apart all around you, that loss of that person, that loss of that person's presence, they're on stage really, I mean, it was visceral. So I can't say enough. You know, then he was a really good room you know, yeah, gotta give him credit. Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds towards Phoebus lodging. Such a Wagner as Faiton would whip you to the west and bring in cloudy night immediately. Spread thy close curtain love performing night that runaways eyes may wink and Romeo leap to these arms, untalked of and unseen. Lovers can see to do their amorous rights by their own beauties, or if love be blind, it best agrees with night. Come, civil night, thou sober, suited matron all in black and learn me how to lose a winning match, played for a pair of stainless maiden hoods. So if you point out in your book that most film versions of Romeo and Juliet cut down a lot of Juliet's lines and speeches, so what was it that Franco Zefferle said about his reasoning for that that he thought that would bring more balance? Yes, absolutely. Adaptations tend to cut Juliet, far more than Romeo. You know, I want to ask a rhetorically, what is this about? I feel my answer is probably misogyny, but with a particular casualty, whether it is the Zefferle adaptation or West Side Story or the 1990s Baselurman film, which was kind of my adolescent moment of encounter with the play, a big casualty whether or to Galloppa Pesci Ferry footage steeds, which is Juliet's rapsodic pre-wedding night, great revuora soliloquy of just how much she is looking forward to having sex with Romeo, which is expressed in wonderfully egalitarian terms. It's fascinating. And a moment of great erotic frankness and wonder, that usually gone or chopped. And also the huge tragic opportunity of the play, which is the potions speech, where she is contemplating all the ways in which the friar's plan for her to fake her in death could go horribly wrong. And of course, it does go horribly wrong, but not quite how she thinks. And when Franco Zefferle cut Olivia Hussie's version of that speech, which they did record, he'd used it in the auditions and they did film it and he told her that it was going because otherwise she would steal the show and he wanted it to be an ensemble piece. So it would give more balance by taking out her big speech. I think to be honest, often in the late 20th century, Juliet's opportunities tend to be cut because directors have focused increasingly on Romeo's perspective and on issues of gang violence. I think that's usually it. That has been certainly when I was writing the book, the more I looked into the making of both West Side Story and the Zefferle film and I was going through archival material, that is really what comes through. That it becomes a story that people adapt to talk about, gang culture and the violence of young men far more than the sexual frankness of young women. Yeah, yeah. And yet my immediate reaction to that is that there's a way to do both and to cover all that in one production. Oh, completely. And you know, and you know, we know there is because Shakespeare does it in his playtext. Right. Yeah. I think that these films have had a real legacy for how the play is staged and understood and how it's taught. When I was writing the book, I found out, for example, that until recently in the Northern Irish educational system, the play was often taught to discuss issues of sectarian violence, not surprising, but that is not all the players about. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that gives us a good opportunity to talk about if you could just share with our listeners what does both alike and dignity mean? And is it important to the story or to Shakespeare's original version of the story that these two families are the same? I think it's vital. This is not to say you cannot create amazing theatre and film that does make the feud legible, that creates an inverted commas reason for the feud. But it's important that in the playtext, only the playtext not necessarily in performance, there is no reason for the feud. The families are alike in dignity. There is no power imbalance. And I think it also reinforces the stupidity and the pity of the feud. Because apparently in Verona, there are two prominent families. Each very, very closely linked with power. You know, family A has one sum, family B has one daughter. They're not only alike in dignity. It's an incredibly eligible match. And I think one of the points Shakespeare's making here is how ridiculous and unfounded the feud is. And of course, the grand spirit and never articulated. But also to give us the hope, the misguided hope, if we know the prologue, that this could all work out. In the interest of time, I'm not going to delve that deeply into act three scene five when Lord Capulet is demanding that his daughter Mary Paris in very short order. That's a scene that I can cover more in other episodes someday about the nurse and about Lord and Lady Capulet, but here's one thing they I reshared about performing that scene for school groups. I was always struck by throughout this show, you know, you have people who are distracted or make noises or like whooping or doing all these variations of things. Every single it never failed every single time we did the show and it pulled down to the portion where Julia is experiencing immediate abuse from her parents. You could hear Penn's drop with the level of attention that those units gave to that moment and I think it's unfortunately because it's a moment they know it's a moment they've experienced and I think that people forget that even if there is an immediate physical abuse happening that verbal abuse is still abuse and that the diminishing of the younger experience by the hands of what the authority is and what the authority desires instead is an experience that they know and because they know it so well because they've probably experienced it so well it would really hard for them to not be completely wrapped up in that moment as it happened. Need you my help? No, Mother. So please you let me now be left alone. Good night. Get the two bed and rest. Or thou hast need. God knows when we shall meet again. I have a fake cold fear thrills through my veins that almost freezes up the heat of life. I'll call them back again to comfort me. Nurse. What should she do here? My dismal scene I needs to must act alone. Come, Vile. What if this mixture do not work at all? Shall I be married then tomorrow morning? No, no, this shelf will bid it. Lie thou there. What if it be a poison which the friar suddenly hath ministered to have me dead? Less than his marriage he should be dishonored because he married me before to Romeo. I fear it is. And yet me thinks it should not. Or he hath air been known a holy man. On that audio production one thing that kind of caught my attention was the line. You know, I'll call them back again to comfort me. Nurse. And there's this real emphasis on she maybe a little bitter. There's a little chuckle on that recording. So anything you recall from that moment either in the staged production or the audio recording of where Juliet was at with her relationship with the nurse at that moment. Wow, that's like that you just brought me back because I would not have I would not have remembered that without that because I don't think I usually stick a pronoun in now. I'm like, yeah, I know I remember that that was very. God, it was such a losing the nurse in that moment when she said just just Mary Paris was so I don't know overwhelmingly sad. Overwhelmingly sad. You know, I had a godmother growing up that meant the world to me and always had my back in that and the idea of her saying something like that or betraying me in some way is just so like you've been here the whole time. You've been here the whole time and now this is what you're saying. So I think that you know, she's already kind of set goodbye to her in some way, but I think that's a that's a final goodbye and it's not pretty and it's not eloquent, but it's it's that she means nothing anymore. And now we get to the place final scene when as the chorus worn does in the prologue our pair of star cross lovers take their life. For actors, they have a hugely emotional scene to deliver all while putting a lot of thought into logistics and blocking. As far as like the actual death when it was happening not the discovery of the body but the death itself was literally just how do we place this so that we're both still visible to the audience that we tell the story that we're dying together and we don't see that I haven't actually so I'm a genre girl. I'm a big horror fan so and also I will say I've died on stage a lot like more than I have in this that make you the the Sean Bean of theater exactly. Exactly. And this is not even just a dose of this is in place where I wasn't supposed to die all of a sudden the director said you're gonna die at the end on stage in front of everyone like I don't talk to you in the script anywhere. So all that to say is John Papa was our our fight director and of course I was like okay I know usually she's that but hold on what if it's like okay we can't so this is not a horror movie we cannot have you fill in blood all over the place. So yeah there was notice all that like intricate choreography if I was wearing like a super boned corset and getting it in the corset so that it really looks like you're you know getting in there and that but most of it for me was Dan's little face laying in my lap you know um yeah the rest of it I might I don't I don't remember thinking and now I'm going to kill myself it was just I hope I see you again it was I'm tired this is what's left to do again maybe I'll see you but but I don't ever remember having the like conscious thought of like and now I'm going to kill myself that wasn't really that present. In Shakespeare's text Romeo drinks the poison he dies. Friar Laurence enters talks the balthazar for a sec then rushes into the tomb just as Juliet's waking up but if you've only seen for example the baslerman film you wouldn't know about the Friar dashing in and out trying to get Juliet to leave and between the two lovers deaths with that part with the Friar cut Juliet wakes up barely too late to avoid tragedy and Romeo notices her eyes open just a split second too late discovers she's alive just after he has swallowed the poison this happens with Leo de Caprio and Claire Danes in that film it was also staged that way in a production directed by Trevor Nunn and co-starring Ian McCallan in 1976 but when did cutting that scene like this really start it starts in 18th century opera it is a completely big giling sort of irresistible impulse it's the one thing you can do to make it worse to make it more sad now in opera obviously you want to sit them both up for a bit of a sing a final are we have before they both concate again but the only sort of blessing for Romeo really is that we know the horrendous mistake he's making but he doesn't he thinks bless him that the quick swig of the poison and a sort of you know after life reunion with Juliet is moments away but if with that moment they both have the horror of knowing that the mistake has been made and which of course in Shakespeare's playtext Juliet still gets but Romeo in this scenario gets it as well with that impulse to really accentuate the agony of the lovers comes a a desire to cut down on the mess of that final scene um I remember every time I've read the play that final scene is it's not as it often is in cinema and on stage it's not a kind of intimate joint tragic moment where you end up with just two beautiful children lying kind of aesthetically posed it's it's chaos it's not it's not a beautiful tragedy I think that scene should be horrifying and messy and dark it's often presented you know the suicides often presented as almost the kind of inevitable romantic climax of a sort of crescendo of agony in fact I think it's really important to show the suicides a terrible mistake this is a decision that Juliet makes in huge panic because she has been so horrifyingly let down Juliet and her Romeo meet their tragic end we've done a good deal of referencing what's faded for Juliet but what about her free will is she a character who it zebates H. agency. I see her with a lot of agency. I wouldn't have done half the shit she did when I was 13. I was like a good little kid. If my dad said no, I'd be like, "We'll got it. Not doing it. Not won't try it. Don't care. Got it." And I think that's also to your other question of how much she is in love that she's willing to fight so hard. I mean, fight to the very end. I'm saying to the very end and I don't mean in any way that I'm condoning those two aside or anything like that. I just mean that she is willing to fight by whatever means until the very end. So I do think she has an incredible amount of agency. Juliet is the one who immediately wants to know is the love of, if I'm meant to be honorable, I purpose marriage. She brings it up. She says to Romeo, you need to make the arrangements, but she is very much setting the framework. I love that for her because she's so definite and confident. Even though at the same time, she does worry about the haste. She worries about the strength of her own feeling and the rapidity into which she's with which she has fallen for him. But on the other hand, in what we call the balcony scene, she has great ideas. She has a much better idea than let's get married tomorrow. She says before she knows Romeo is listening, she wants him to give up his family. But if he won't, she knows she says, "Or I'll no longer be a capulet." And then later when she knows he's there, she says, "I'll follow you, my Lord, throughout the world." Great idea. It worked for other Shakespearean heroines. She should totally do that. So she's full of ideas. She's full of agency. So Alejandra and Sophie see Juliet as a character with a lot of agency. Nari has another perspective on this. I feel like Juliet was a character with a lot of autonomy, but not necessarily a lot of agency. I feel like there's a level of self-intured, like, think-line confidence and knowing of who she is, that yes, get shifted and changed around in the story as she meets Romeo, then has this new discovery of what new feelings are to her. But in a way, I felt so self-intured in a way that no one had to tell me who I was. I just was who I was. And in being who I was, I could still be pursuing the things I wanted. But there's still a level of structure in my household, in my relationships that painted and colored how I exist in. I can only leave my home with, like, permissions or if I'm going to see a friar, like, there's a level of shelteredness that I would say I experienced as Juliet just being within my household and not being allowed to roam in free, like, be among the world in the same way we see that Romeo is allowed to be out in the street all day long with his friends and around and other people are out and about. Okay, I did have to ask Sophie about one particular modern reworking of Romeo and Juliet. One where Juliet gets to live. I got to ask, what impact do you think Taylor Swift's song Love Story has had on, you know, the more recent legacy of Juliet? Well, it had, oh, I love that song. I love that song. It's a good song. It's such a great song. And do you know, in Oxford, there used to be a queer cabaret troupe called "Lashings of Ginger Beer" and in the late 2000s, they did a lesbian version of that song before we had equal marriage. And I was just like on the floor weeping every time I was exposed to it. It's a wonderful song. And I think it really re-inscribes. I don't know if Taylor Swift was, in fact, taking her textual cue from what Romeo says at the moment of his parting from Juliet in the morning after seeing a look-play. But he says, you know, Juliet says, oh, do you think we'll ever meet again? And the audience is like, no, everything is awful. But Romeo says, and I press you badly, oh, there's no doubt of it. And you know, all our woes will serve for sweet discourse in after years. And you get this little snapshot of Romeo and Juliet looking forward to sitting by the fire and kind of telling their story. It wasn't a dreadful, but a kind of Shenai at Wayne moment to really looks like we made it. And the start of the Taylor Swift song, you know, we were both young when I first saw you. So I love that song because it imagines a future for them because it imagines a Juliet who can look back. At the same time, I think there's a kind of princessy patriarchal lens to it that, you know, that Romeo sorts, you know, I talked to your dad, go pick out a white dress, like Romeo would ever talk to her dad, like he could have had a thing. He can do nothing. He just lies on the floor and cries because he's done a murder. But you know, it would be much better for Juliet if she did have a husband who could talk to her dad. So she could go pick out a white dress, but it was not to be. But again, I love that song. It's marvelous. There's one thing that occurred to me, I should ask, maybe a little bit more in the realm of trivia, but also in the realm of how our perception of this play has been shaped. Am I correct in recalling that the word balcony never appears in the text? Yes, this is my favorite piece of Shakespeare trivia. I want to go somewhere where there's an icebreaker where it would be appropriate for me to like bore people with this fact. If people listen to this podcast, they'll notice that I keep sort of puritanically saying what we call the balcony scene. And that's because there isn't a balcony in the play. Juliet is just above presumably at a window because we didn't have balconies in England in the 1590s. Shakespeare didn't know what a balcony was. I think this is more evidence he didn't go to Italy because the first time somebody introduces the concept of the balcony isn't it marvelous that it needed introducing. The first time somebody introduces the concept of the balcony to the British is 1611 where Thomas Coriatt writes a big travel guide called Coriatt Crudities and he talks about the balcony. And it's, I can't remember what that game is where you have to describe a word without using the word. Like taboo. Taboo exactly. He's very much okay guys. The Italians have this thing and it jumps out and it's a bit like a terrace but it's just attached to a wall and they can walk about on it and that is the balcony. Juliet's house in Verona if you ever go to Verona and you want to go and see their castle to Julietta which I hardly recommend but it is worth noting that that house didn't actually have a defined balcony until the 1930s. They added it. They did add it. Yes they added it to make it more like the Hollywood version of the story which had just come out on film. So 1611 you said that description of balcony. Yes. Do we know when the idea of a balcony or the scene being performed specifically on a balcony was introduced into the performance history of the play? We don't know precisely but the first time it's commented on and of course that's the difficulty isn't it. You know the first time we know it happened is Garrick put Juliet on a balcony. Got it. There may have been balconies before that but that's when we know it really becomes solidified and it's also you know in the 18th century that people start to talk about the balcony scene, the great scene on the balcony. Got it. Yeah and it's one of those things that until you stop and step back to think about it you think of it as being so integral to the play that I assume it was there in the beginning or even like I think of like Lady M motioning washing her hands and the sweep walking scene once I learned but that wasn't always you know. Indeed there. Yes it's astonishing. It feels a little bit like discovering that your ex-scold doesn't appear in Hamlet. But of course it does. There's lots of discussion of it but it is astonishing. I mean I'm all full balconies. You know we're not anti-balcany people here. We are not anti-balcany on this podcast but I think it's a useful indication of the things we can think we know about to play or the things that do become fundamental to a play's meaning but there's something that the play has accrued over theatre history rather than being integral. Yeah yeah just to peek into the whole quote unquote death of the author the fact that these plays are not one man's that they've been shaped by you know performers and people. Totally yes. It's not the death of the author it's sort of the life of the play. Yeah yeah I love that. And as I say I'm very pro-balcany. Yes yes same here same here always pro-balcany. I don't know why we're talking like the balcony league or big balcony is correct you know the big balcony lobby is going to come through. No I don't think anyone's trying to show down the balconies anytime soon. No have your balcony. All right all right for all the talk about balconies I acknowledge we didn't delve all that deeply into the content and the language of the so-called balcony scene. So just know that there's more about that iconic scene in the podcast's upcoming episode focused on the character Romeo. I have that lined up. for release this February, and I also have an episode in the works all about the nurse. As we're wrapping things up with Juliet, I'll mention it was a delight to spend time with this episode's three guests who also clearly adore this character, and I became all the more fan of Juliet through making this episode. Yes, I know you could still dismiss the story as one about two rash idiot teenagers, but there's no denying how extraordinary Juliet is. We'll end this episode as we do every episode of the podcast. Here's what Neyri and Alejandra would say to an actor if asked for advice about taking on the role of Juliet. I'd say Drake a lot more. And it seems like simple. Yes, of course, you should already be doing your performer, but like, in touring and moving around and doing so many things, I would just forget to, and there was a period and time during the run where I just no tears were coming out. At all. I was still having to have these spirits and be there, but I was just so confused. I was like, I saw that the drop of a dime. Where are all my tears? But it's because I was dehydrated. Drink your water. It's important drink all of your water. I think I would also say what you imagine you are is what you are. So when you are stepping into what other people like painted this character to be because it's such well-known character, what you imagine your Juliet is, is what your Juliet is, not of what other people like paint onto it or decide who you are. When you step through it, that can't be your character. And however you imagine her to be is how she'll be. Just bring all your heart and your quirk. Don't feel like she can't be silly or funny or strange. I mean, we were all strange at that age. Come on. And then who are you when you are alone on that stage and who and why? Are you speaking then to who and why does it matter? What do you need from them? From speech to speech, Romeo, Romeo, whereforat, Al Romeo feels very different than Gallup a pace. It feels very different from the tune speech. What is she trying to get from them? What does she need? So desperately in some of these moments, I mean, is it just, is it a diary entry in this moment? Is it a confession in this moment? Is it or is it something just totally vastly different? And I think it could be so many things. And once that speech is done, are you changed in any way? Or are you changing through the speech? All that kind of stuff is super important, I think. And, you know, be in love with you, Romeo. Yeah. Yeah. A big thank you to all the amazing guests on this season two premiere episode, Alejandra Escalante, Neyari Poole, and Dr. Sophie Duncan. And thank you to Blackstone Audio for allowing us to share some of that stellar audio production of Romeo and Juliet with you all in this episode. Original Music for the podcast is by Darrell Chadwick, art is by Chris Weller, interview conducting and script crafting is by Yours Truly, Emily Rome, and audio editing is by Josh Allen. A heartfelt shout out to all the generous supporters of the Shakespeare's Shadows Kickstarter campaign earlier this year. It is thanks to the contributions of 76 backers, plus many folks who support the podcast in other ways that we were able to relaunch the podcast this year. If you enjoyed this episode, please do consider giving the podcast a positive reading and review on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or another platform of your choice. Positive reviews from listeners like you can help other folks discover the podcast. Enjoy us for the next episode, which is all about Iago. Thanks for tuning in everyone. Until next time, fair thee well. [BLANK_AUDIO]