The Bard with Bill
The Bard with Bill
Romeo and Juliet
Join Bill as he takes us on a journey through the emotionally charged streets of Verona, Italy in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
We'll discover how the play is filled with morons, why one characters could very well have ended up with clammy hands, whether or not the Montagues and the Capulets ended up in purgatory, and that there may be some echoes of a frightfully boozy Irish queen in the script.
During each episode Bill will invite you to draw along and give us your interpretation of the idioms we find in Shakespeare's works. Please share your drawings with us using the hashtag #BardwithBill.
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Additional Reading and corrections
- The female role with the most lines in Shakespeare's plays is actually Rosalind, Cleopatra is second, Imogen third, Portia fourth and Juliet fifth.
- Dante's Purgatorio is from Canto VII is available to read for free online.
- The tales of Queen Medb can be found in the Ulster Cycle of Irish Mythology.
Welcome everyone to the first episode of our brand new podcast The Bard with Bill. Join Bill every other week as he unravels the mysteries and histories of the complete works of William Shakespeare one play at a time. If you've never seen Shakespeare before, there's no better introduction. If you're a bard buff you'll learn something you never knew. This week Bill talks about one of Shakespeare's most popular plays the tragedy
of two starcrossed lovers:Romeo and Juliet
William Ross-Fawcett:Hello, bon giorno, and a very warm welcome to the Bard with Bill, Episode One, Romeo and Juliet. My name is Bill Ross Fawcett I am an actor, storyteller, oftentimes professional fool. And in this series, I will be serving as your guide to some of Shakespeare's finest works. Now this episode takes us to the emotionally charged streets of Verona, Italy, and we'll discover how the play is filled with morons. Why one of the characters could very well have ended up with clammy hands whether or not the montagues and the Capulets ended up in purgatory, and that there may be some echoes of a frightfully boozy Irish queen in the lines. So if any of that piques your interest, prepare yourself by puffing out your chest and then display of true Italian braggadocio. Open your heart and settle back for some Shakespearean shenanigans. Now, I'm going to start these episodes with something that proved very successful in the series of online workshops that preceded this podcast the first iteration of the Bard with Bill. And that's going to be a wee bit of a delve into the language since we wouldn't be having much of a Shakespeare podcast, we don't talk about words, every now and again. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to tease out some of the phrases and idioms that appear in Shakespeare's plays that we still use today in modern conversation. And for those of you who are inclined towards some creative doodling, and I know there are many of you out there, maybe you could have a crack at trying to illustrate some of these phrases, you know, while you're listening to the podcast, or anytime we've got a spare moment. And if you fancy why not post it to Twitter with hashtag bond with Bill. And we'll see if we can get a bit of a gallery going because I know from the workshops, at least, that there were some really exciting, really great pieces of art. And I'd love to share that with everyone. So let's get a bit of a gallery going where we can enjoy each other's artwork. Because that's the thing about idioms that they're they're really visually evocative. Now at first I should explain what is an idiom? Well, idioms are phrases that we use all the time in our everyday conversations, we sprinkle them throughout our conversations to provide color and flavor and to provide emphasis and to evoke images in our minds. I often somewhat unfamiliar with the phrase, they might seem like complete nonsense, because they're often very, quite bizarre. So for example, the phrase, it's raining cats and dogs now we don't literally mean that we're being bombarded by tortoise shell tabbies. What we mean to say is that it's raining very heavily. But the the image this evokes of these mammals pelting down on us and breaking our umbrellas, it really serves to highlight and emphasize exactly what we're trying to convey with that phrase. Romeo and Juliet is quite an interesting challenge when it comes to idiom hunting through Shakespeare's texts, because it's such a well known oft quoted play that that it raises this question for me, which is, at what point does a commonly quoted line become part of our culture's everyday lexicon, or our everyday language that we use without thinking about where it's come from? When does it stopped becoming a quote, and merge into an idiom? Now, I don't know the answer to that I'm not a linguist or a philologist. But what do you think this is my first question that I'm pushing out to you when there's a quote, stop becoming a quote, when does it become something beyond that? So with with phrases from our MJ, like a rose by any other name would smell as sweet or star crossed lovers now. Now, these are beautiful phrases, and they're very philosophically interesting quotes, but they are quotes. When we tend to use them. We generally know that we're quoting Shakespeare, but what I'm more interested in is the ones that slipped through the net. So phrases like a wild goose chase. Now this is a quote by mercu show, he says, may if our wits run the wild goose chase, I'm done. And this is when he's engaging in a jewel of bantering Wits with Romeo. Now, what Shakespeare is doing here is he's comparing Romeo's wits to a wild goose, ie, there's no way that MacUser is going to be able to keep up and catch him. But over time, this phase is kind of developed to mean a fool's errand or an endeavor that just won't yield any results by pursuing an it consciously great image in your mind. I mean, can you just imagine trying to capture a goose I mean, let alone a domesticated one, let alone a wild one, you know, with its wings splayed and it's hissing at you. It's it's a brilliant image. Another nice idiom, I found tucked away from most people to notice is this phrase, by the book. Now Juliet says this after she and Romeo, who shed their first kiss. Nowadays, we use this phrase by the book to mean doing something properly or according to the rules. And that's certainly how an actor could play this line in the play. It's referencing the word play and the rhetorical arguments that Romeo and Juliet have been sharing to culminate in them justifying the case. But it could also be playing into a more Christian idea, because the book could be, you know, the Christian holy book, the Bible. And there's a lot of the phrases in the exchange are about pilgrims and chastity and holiness. Or the actors could use this line to inform how the kiss is presented on stage, you know, is it a very chaste and proper kiss? Is it the perfect kiss for Julia? Is that why she's saying why you kiss by the book? Or is the kiss perhaps a bit nervous, a bit clunky, a bit formal, which is prompting Juliet to tease Romeo. So these are all things that the actors and directors can decide on. And this is an instance of this phrase by the book actually being more open to interpretation in the play than it now is today, if we say you've done something by the book, there's really only one way that can be interpreted. And finally, how about this one, this is another one of Juliet's parting is such Sweet Sorrow. Now, this is one of the many morons that I mentioned at the beginning because this is an oxymoron. And what an oxymoron is, is it's a phrase made up of two diametrically opposed parts, two opposites. So sweet is a positive, and sorrow is negative. But when you put them together, they make something that's far more complex, far more interesting for an audience to watch and listen to. So Juliet's sad because Romeo is leaving, but the sweetness is there too, because you have to be together in the first place in order to part so there's this nice being tucked away just before they part and there's also this sense perhaps that the sweetness is anticipating a reunion or that the the partying coming to an end. So it's a very sweet, if you pardon the pun phrase. Romeo has a whole speech filled with oxymorons at the beginning. When he starts out in his melancholic, romantic phase. He says, oh, loving hate, heavy lightness, feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health. All of these things to illustrate that. Love is is not just one sided, love can be great and wonderful, but it can also hurt can also be painful. But he really goes overboard with this and to the point of ridicule, whereas Juliet just has this parting is such Sweet Sorrow. And it's a very simple phrase, and it says, conveys everything than it needs to so I think that's not true one two Juliet on the oxymoron front. So those are some idioms have a go doodle them if you want to. Let's see what your mind brings to life. And don't let me limit you if you've got a favorite quote from Romeo and Juliet that might not be an idiom necessarily, but it's just something that really speaks to you and you can really visualize what that might look like. And yet you're dying to give it life on paper. Which is another oxymoron to give something life threatening to give something life Yeah, go for it and hashtag bond with Bill if you fancy sharing it with us. And one one last point to consider about language that I wanted to touch on before we move on to R and j in general. Is, is this word Romeo Now, sometimes the name Romeo we use it as a noun today. And we we bestow on a man to make a point about his love life. And it's often used teasingly, it's often casting him as this lovesick fool. But interesting, we don't have this for women. Whereas Romeo and Juliet are equally part of this relationship. These star crossed lovers the most famous lovers perhaps, in in western history. But we Don't do this for Juliet, we don't say to to a woman. Oh, all right, Juliet, when she's expressing romantic thoughts in the same way that we use Romeo. And I was wondering why that might be what what, what's behind that? Why is that this double standard. And I think Unfortunately, there's definitely a sexist element to this and it doesn't really paint a pretty picture, whichever angle you analyze it from So, either, socially historically, women have been viewed as predisposed towards romanticism and whimsy and emotionality so that it doesn't beg commenting on it nothing unique when a woman is acting bare ticularly amorously. On the other hand, there's this masculinity issue, which is that a man portrays or shows romantic emotions, he's singled out and ridiculed for it. So there's probably elements to both of these things going on here. But I think I've found a more positive way to look at this, based in the text itself. Now if we look at Romeo and Juliet as characters, Juliet is actually the far more grounded lover. She's far more aware, and she's far more steady and the driving force as well, in comparison with Romeo, who's sometimes a bit away with the fairies and is sometimes sometimes a bit of a lovesick fool. And so maybe that's why we don't call her a woman, a Juliet if she's getting carried away with her romance because Juliet contains herself. I mean, she's very passionate, but she's very realistic. So we're going to talk about Jules later because she's great. But let's carry on with this overview of the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. Now, it's a very well known play, many of us have studied or will studied at some point, it's an audience, all time fan favorite, but we can always use a bit of a refresher about what it's about. So I decided to challenge myself to deliver a Shakespeare synopsis, shortened snappy Shakespeare where I cover the major plot points of Romeo and Juliet, and I'm going to do that in under two minutes. So let's see if I can achieve that. Okay, I'm just reading my watch. Okay. The play starts in Verona where an old feud between the montagues and the Capulets is broken out into another street brawl, Prince escalus breaks it up and threatens to execute anyone who starts another fight. Meanwhile, Romeo Montague is mooning over his unrequited love for Roselyne benvolio. Also, a Montague convinces him to go to a party at the Capulets house to see Rosalyn and compare her with other women cut to the Capulets house, where Juliet's mother tells her that the county Paris wants to marry Juliet. Now Juliet isn't really wowed by the idea. That night at the party, it's underway and Romeo is convinced to go by benvolio and their friend, Kyushu Tybalt, Juliet's cousin spots Romeo at the party and wants to fight him, but Lord Capulet tells him to stop being a party pooper. Romeo meets Juliet love at first sight balcony scene. kissy kissy lovey, lovey. Romeo convinces Friar Lawrence the next day to officiate a marriage between him and Juliet. The nurse acts as a go between and the young lovers are married in secret. Later that very day table starts a fight in the street and kills Mercutio. Romeo then kills Tybalt. Romeo is banished to Mantua. But not before he and Juliet spend the night together. Juliet is told by parents that she has to marry Paris and goes to cry lions for help. He gives her a potion that makes her appear dead and promises to send a letter to Romeo so he can come back with Juliet. And they can ride into the sunset together. Romeo doesn't get the letter. He hears Juliet is dead, but she isn't really important buys poison, goes to her tomb kills Paris kills himself, Juliet wakes up, sees Romeo kills herself, everyone is sad and agrees to stop killing each other. The end? Phew! Wow, well, that was incredibly stressful. You know what I think in future episodes, I'm going to have to call in some help from some of my handlebards chums and get them to do that bit. For so that's the very brief Romeo and Juliet, short and snappy Shakespeare. And actually, that wasn't too difficult because Romeo and Juliet is pretty easy to follow. On a scale of one to five of the convoluted Shakespeare plots, it's probably a two if, if not a 1.5. And it's really just one story told from two different angles, Romeo and Juliet, although there are some scenes that have nothing to do with the plot, seemingly, and those are usually the comic interludes that, you know, they usually cut and it's a real shame because there's some really beautiful moments as there's a moment with the musicians who've been brought in for the wedding between Juliet Paris, but then Juliet's found supposedly And everyone's weeping and wailing. It's a really heart wrenching scene. And these musicians are just standing there in the background and everyone leaves and they're just left there. And they've got these great names like they're like the mechanicals in Midsummer Night's Dream if they formed a band, one of them's called James sound post. And one of the Capulets servants starts getting really Larry with them and challenging them onto a fight, and they don't really know what's going on. And that's great. And then there's another scene, which is with the servants preparing for the Capulets feast, and they're running around going Where's pot pan. And this character pot pan has always captured my imagination. And there's these other characters at the backdoor called su grindstone and now and it's just a really nice moment of the common people if you like. And these characters are just some of the most unused ever in the history of Shakespeare. And, you know, one day what I want to do is I want to write a play with all of these unloved, frequently cut characters where they all say no Enough is enough. We're not having this anymore, we're gonna band together. And I don't know, they traveled in time and beat up Shakespeare or something with pot pan as their chief. But anyway, that's a massive digression. Let's get back to the story itself. So where does Romeo and Juliet come from? or Why did Shakespeare write this story? Well, the story of Romeo and Juliet is not Shakespeare's creation. And spoiler alert for the rest of this series of podcasts, most of the stories in his plays aren't. Now in modern times, we've got this we've got a bit of an obsession in the arts with creating novelty and creating new things and seeking the original of everything. But this really hasn't been a thing throughout most of history. If you think back to, you know, the, the moment when someone took some colored colorful clay and, and splattered all over the walls and made a handprint in a cave somewhere. And then next person thought, you know what I can do better than that I can, I can, I can draw a horse. And in this, this artistic improvement has carried on over the times, you know, in terms of storytelling as well. So the stories have, have informed each other and they've taken on other people's stories, but it's the method of storytelling, the changes. And this is very much the height of high art in Shakespeare's day is repackaging and retelling stories, but competing with each other to who can tell these stories best. And these stories are often taken from antiquity. So we're talking about ancient Rome, or Ancient Greece, and it's trying to craft that perfect storytelling medium, whether it's to poetry or playwriting, or art or fine art or whatever. But interestingly, Shakespeare straddles this very fine line. He's not an aristocrat, so he's not doing it for art for art's sake or for eternal glory. He's, he's doing it for an income, he's doing it for money. He's doing it for patrons. So on one sense, he is pursuing this, this crafting more perfect art, because that will appeal to the aristocrats in their height, their higher court members and the you know, the nobility, but he's also writing for the people and he's writing for popular consumption. So he straddles this really interesting line. The story or the source for the story is almost certainly this poem, written by a man called Arthur Brooks in 1562. And it's called the tragical history of Romeus and Juliet. And it in itself is a repackaging of earlier Italian stories. Now, interestingly, the montagues and the Capulets may actually have existed since these houses and all their names are mentioned the Italian versions, at least in montecchi, and the capillarity and they appear in a passage of the very famous Italian poet dumpy, Ligeti's poem, not the famous Inferno, but the next one in that series, that purgatorio. This was written in the 14th century Sophie, quite a while before Shakespeare's kicking about, and in this poem, mentioning the montecchi and the capillarity. The the poet is lamenting the state of Italy with its feuding families. Now, in literature about this, the city of Verona does crop up, but also with relation to these two feuding families that are the cities of Cremona, and montecchio. So, all across this kind of Northern belt of Italy, and that so which means that the battlefield between these two rival families is actually spreads out far beyond the scope of Shakespeare's play, which is set in Verona. Now, Shakespeare sticks almost entirely to the main beats of Brooks poem, but he does In other significant ways, for one thing, he's writing a play, whereas Brooks was writing a poem. But also, Brooke finishes the poem with a DIRECT address to the audience. He addresses the audience directly. And he tells us that Romeo and Juliet died because they indulge their wanton lust for adolescent passions, and they ignored the advice of their elders. And they also lays the blame on this meddlesome priest character, which in Tudor England is hardly surprising since Catholics were, were routinely singled out and targeted as figures of villainy. As as a result of the the unrest from the Reformation. It's very much a more morality tale. Brooks poem is saying these two lovers tragedy, and it's all their fault. Whereas Shakespeare, he doesn't condemn his lovers and even go so far as he doesn't condemn them. With the ending, you know, unlike some of Shakespeare's other plays, like Hamlet and symbolism, where the characters are wrestling with the moral and theological implications of taking, like taking their own lives, he doesn't burden the play with these debates, these discussions, even though you know, Romeo and Juliet, both very eloquent characters, they could certainly have quite an interesting discourse about this to themselves and soliloquy, but he doesn't burden the story with that he's not interested in that. At this point. He just wants to talk about the story of these lovers. He doesn't want to talk about whether they were right or whether they were wrong. And this lack of judgment steers us away from a moral tale, and it leaves it open to interpretation from audiences. And so for all its horror, and the bloodshed, this play has a real feel of celebration about a celebration of life that incorporates all the good things all the bawdiness and that the happiness but also heartbreak and bloodshed. Another one way in the Brooks poem differs from the plane, not a major one, but the character of Mercutio changes slightly in the poem. He sits next to Juliet at the feast, and he tries to woo her. But she doesn't fancy him because, and this is directly taken from the text, he's got these ice cold hands, he's got cold hands, which won't even be warmed up by putting them next to a fire. And so she thinks now I'm not interested in this. So she turns to her person on the other side of her at dinner, which happens to be Romeo. And then the rest is history. From that point forth. Now I can see why Shakespeare didn't include this. This icy clammy handed Mercutio show because it sort of detracts from that impact of the love at first sight meeting. But I think it's quite an interesting little, little nugget of what could have been, you know, clammy handed Mercutio would have changed the character a lot. Now, Romeo and Juliet is very definitely a tragedy. But it's not like the rest of the ones in the Shakespearean canon. And it's different from other tragedies of the period. The tragic heroes aren't warlords or royalty or semi divine beings or anything. Now, if I asked you, listeners out there, how many of you know royalty? Personally, I imagine the answer would be very, very few of you. Unless, for some reason, I don't know that the Danish royal family is listening intently waiting for the hamlet episode, I don't know. But the same would go if I said, How many of you know warriors, warlords, or well, soldiers, military leaders, or whatever? The answer might be a few more, but I'm sure that the answer would be quite small. Whereas if I asked you, how many of you know, teenagers personally, the answer is going to be everyone because we will have been teenagers at some point, or we will be we might have some younger listeners listening along as well. I wonder if our MJ has any advice for any young people going through or about to go through adolescence to some life advice? I guess. Let's take some life advice from Friar Lawrence and from the nurse mush them together and see what we can get so far. Lawrence says wisely and slowly they stumble that run fast so just chill out and enjoy it and don't Don't be in a rush to get through it because you know, there's there's lots to enjoy, as well as all the headaches and the swirling emotions and hormones and or whatever. And then the nurse says seek happy nights to happy days. I think that's probably probably the best advice that anyone can ever give. But that's enough of unsolicited life advice from Bill let's let's carry on. I think the best way of illustrating Seeing how this tragedy is different is by comparing this tale of young lovers to another one in Shakespearean, this tale of pyramus and thursby. Now he parodies this in Midsummer Night's Dream where the mechanicals do the play within the play. But it's a story about young lovers separated by forces outside their control and they both died due to tragic misunderstandings. But that's about the extent of the similarity pyramus in thursby, has the basically two stock characters that a complete cardboard cutout so this lovers stereotype archetype. Now Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet Takes on many stock characters from the theatrical traditions of the time. We've got the tyrannical father, we've got the bawdy servant in the nurse the swaggering Bravo, the meddling priest, but then he does something different to them, he flushes them out a bit more to make them.
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William Ross-Fawcett:Now let's talk lovers for a second. Now, in many plays in the Shakespeare canon, at least, this is true for me personally as an actor, but I know that this is true for several of my friends as well that the lovers sometimes can bring challenges. They can sometimes appear a bit superficial a bit surface level and their decisions can sometimes turn at the drop of a hat. And they're a bit difficult to connect to or maybe sometimes we might fall into the trap of seeing them as a little more than sort of stock character to further the plot than necessarily for the plot but they didn't really zing hero in Much Ado About Nothing is an example of this and if I was feeling really ungenerous, I would describe her as little more than a prop. Now she doesn't affect any change she's only affected by others, particularly the men in the play and in the latest handlebars production of Much Ado About Nothing we were a bit cheeky with this. We had a played by a puppet created from an appended mop in a dress with gardening gloves for hands now was this sharp biting piece of satire about the way she's barely got any lines and she's quite literally passed around a man like an inanimate object, or did we just think it was funny to chuck them up at each other? I'm not going to tell you that. true master will never reveal all their secrets. But with this in mind, our lovers, Shakespeare's lovers, what do we think about Rmj? Well, Romeo, let's start with Romeo. He's often called Hamlet in love. Now. I this is probably due to his eloquence and his emotional depth and whatever. But I think Romeo is a bit distinct from Hamlet. He's more impulsive, and he agonizes about things after the fact rather than fretting about them before, which is what Hamlet does. Now, the best thing about Romeo I think, for an actor for an audience for anyone is that he has this journey that he goes on in this play, he's not the same at the end as he is at the beginning. He starts out as a parody of this archetypical lover with his oxymoronic speech, you know, he's more in love with the idea of being in love with and he actually is with rosland, but when he meets Juliet, this changes Juliet changes him. And this starts from the very moment they meet, they have this, this speech together, which is actually takes the form of a sonnet. So they share a sonnet and, you know, Shakespeare would go on to become famous for his work with sonnets. But this is very interesting this, this sonnet shed is like a duet actually, Romeo starts with a few stanzas, a few lines, and then Juliet replies with the next few stanzas, few lines, and then they start to intertwine and they start to play off each other a bit more closely, and, and they start to finish each other's sentences and it's really playful and it's really intimate and it's incredibly satisfying to watch as an audience and to listen to. later on. Romeo sort of reverts he slips back into his, you know, Moon sick lover when when He tries to swear on the moon that he adores Juliet and chichi nip this in the bud right away, she got swept up by the moon. And then he defers to her when he says, What shall I swear by? And I think this is a really nice moment on Juliet taking the initiative in the relationship. And this kind of sets up how I want to talk about Juliet as one of Shakespeare's finest heroines. Juliet has the third most lines of any of Shakespeare's female characters. In second place, is Rosalind from as you'd like it, in first place, we'll have a guess, who do you think has the most lines of all Shakespeare's heroines in Shakespeare? Just Just have a thing Have a guess? The answer is in first place. Cleopatra, from Antony and Cleopatra. Now, Juliet, actually appears before the other two. In terms of, you know, stage appearance, she's the first one that's written. And she's actually quite simple versiv both, both theatrically socially, and also within the play itself. Because, at this time, Juliet would have been played by a young male actor. These actors at the time, they wouldn't have been the stars of the company, they would have been almost like apprentices, you know that and usually they would be given supporting roles or not, not many lines and stuff because the audience is wanted to come and see the written Burbage is the will Kemp's of the time. But in this one, by giving Juliet, this center stage, for a lot more of the action than we previously seen a lot of these plays. It's really saying that young men and women therefore deserve to be heard more, and we want to see more of this. Now, we can't second guess Shakespeare's intentions, but it does have that very clear impact and it does, his female characters do develop in complexity and stage presence, as he continues in his career, you know, culminating with Rosalind who I think is probably the best Shakespearean heroine and Cleopatra later who's just this overwhelming stage presence, but then when we think about Juliet speeches within it, talking about this complexity in stage time, her she's she's been a bit of a headache for some, you know, more prudish programmers or directors or editors, because her speeches are this kind of underlying presence of this quite noticeable erotic charge to them or Visser ality. I don't know if that's a word Visser ality. But her speeches have more in common with Mercutio, she is very earthy, Queen map speech and many of Romeo's more more ephemeral, more, you know, up in the heavens kind of thinking. language, you know, Juliet's gallop apace you fiery footed steed. She talks about when she's waiting for Romeo she talks about owning him like a hawk and bringing him back to her. Juliet very much takes more space. In the play more people talk about her as well. She definitely is a very, very solid presence within this play. And I think nothing sums that up better than the very last line of the play, which is fine lines that says for never was a story of more Whoa, than this of Juliet. And her Romeo, which is a very nice inversion of the title Romeo and Juliet, Juliet, and her Romeo. Now, I don't know about you, but I think that the world of Romeo and Juliet feels the most real. Out of all the worlds created in Shakespeare's plays. We get a sense of what the weather's like we get a sense of what time of day it is, we get a sense of, you know, how the weeks pan out and people's plans and people's timeframes. And we get a huge amount of biographical information relayed to us about a character's their relationships to each other, and crucially, what drives them, you know, Romeo and Juliet driven by their passions, Capulet wants to secure the interest of his family through his single surviving heir Juliet is his only child. Friar Lawrence wants peace to reign with Mercutio he wants a good time. Tybalt wants a scrap Prince escalus once everyone has stopped killing each other in the city, the apothecary wants money. You know, it's very clear what all these characters want. And that's I think what makes this play really fascinating to engage with them watch and perform and otter direct is that checks bit doesn't rely on tinkering with a clever, clever plot device or clever coincidences. He like, like a clock maker or a toy maker winding up his clockwork toys, and then he sets them on these paths that will collide. So he psychologically realizes them enough sufficiently that they can operate true to their, you know, their desires, then their collision will create the drama and that's how we get the play. We were watching we can understand what these characters motivations are, even if we don't agree with them necessarily, and this is something that we really take for granted. You know, with modern theater after Epson and the birth of naturalism in theater, we kind of take for granted that characters are real people that they have thoughts and fears and ideas and feelings. But this isn't always the case. It's not always the case in Shakespeare, let alone in the place of claims of his time. But I think Romeo and Juliet, considering that it's, it's not one of his most mature plays, it's not one of the ones that comes towards the end of his career when he's supposed to have this grand summation of a life in the theater. It's, it's a real, it's really quite well realize drama. And unlike pyramids and thursby, or other tragedies, the Hand of Fate, or the hand of the playwright is actually quite subtle. You know it, he doesn't introduce a lion or a bear to leap dramatically into the scene and mess things up for the characters. He comes as a plague and a plague in Elizabethan times with something very real. And the very present danger things that people would understand and react to. It's a world away from in ancient Greek tradition, this deus ex machina, where the gods will literally appear on stage, and then change things in order to affect different outcome. And to not like that. So it's very realistic, no spirits, no witches, no Gods No, no nothing out of the ordinary. Well, except for one thing. And that's Mercutio. He has this delightful speech that's always really intrigued and infused me and I'm talking here about the Queen Mab speech. This is where Mercutio presents before the ball. The masked ball with a Capulets he. He goes on this really long, intense speech about a fairy queen who invades the thoughts of the sleeping and manipulates them to follow their base animal sinful desires like lust and wrath and gluttony, ambition, avarice, it's all very unchristian, and it's all very pagan. And it starts off quite tweets talking about the little squirrels that that make the carriage for Queen Mab and our Waggoner is a gnat with a gray coat, and he's got this whip of crickets bone, but then it picks up the pace. And it starts to Thunder along with this relentless pounding language and in this stage and gallops night by night through lovers brains, not minds, their brains, literal gray matter. And it's only stopped when Romeo puts a halt to it by go now talks did nothing. And even though Mercutio laughs this off with true dreams, we're left with this sense that that tends to suffuse quite a lot of Shakespeare I find is that there's these ephemeral, ungraspable, unseen elements of, of nature of reality that we can't really be certain about, like, dreams and consciousness and truth and destiny and beauty and art and right and wrong. This all this fear of the unseen is is tense. Yeah, it drips through Shakespeare's plays very subtly, but sometimes it comes out smacks you in the face like this, this scene. But Queen Mab, of course, isn't big out of nothing but vain fantasy. She didn't just pop into Shakespeare's brains yet to come from somewhere. So where did she come from? And this is the part where my mythology folklore story, junkie, nature comes to the fore I'm such a nerd for this stuff. And if any of you are mythology or folklore freaks like me, you might be already familiar with this character from Irish mythology Queen MeV. Now her name may translate to something like she who intoxicates which is probably in relation to or might be in relation to this alcoholic beverage Mead. And it's believed that she occupying this position in ancient Ireland as a fertility and sovereignty goddess that the ancient kings of Ireland would ritually marry to bestow divine legitimacy on their ruling and favor them in times of peace and war. Now she was in the toilet fickle and allegedly fearsome to behold, playing chieftains off against each other for her own unknown ends. And it was her instigation in the cattle raid of Cooley that led to the death of Ireland's most famous hero Coquelin. So we've got this manipulating supernatural queen who intoxicates. Now this sounds a lot like mab, I think. But some people will also argue that that might be a bit of a stretch, you know, for one, there doesn't seem to be much indication in the wider Shakespeare literature that he's even aware of any Irish stories or traditions. Actually, we see very little of the Irish at all in Shakespeare, whereas, you know, it's chock full of Spaniards and Welsh and Scots and Fleming's and the French and oodles of Italians, but there's very few Irish. I don't know what this is. But um, one suggestion might be that, you know, there was a lot of unrest and periodic slaughtering of each other by the English and the Irish in this point in history, and maybe it was a bit of a touchy subject. Maybe people would prefer to not see references to Ireland played out in stage, I don't know. So maybe Shakespeare didn't really know of this Queen may have maybe maybe Mab is a diminutive form of the English name label. So he's kind of giving this cutesy name to a rather daunting, terrifying fairy queen figure that that might owe her origins to somewhere other than Ireland. But we're going to look into these sorts of origins in Midsummer Night's Dream when we do that episode. It's impossible for us to know for sure where Queen map comes from. But the brilliant thing about Shakespeare, the thing I find endlessly exciting about Shakespeare is that it provides this welcome and rich Canvas for us, as audiences as creatives to infuse with our own cultural experience. So even if Shakespeare had never heard of Queen may have the fact that the speech evokes this ancient, slightly scary pagan deity for me personally, might affect how I choose to play this as an actor, or how I might work with actors to realize this little scene as a director, or even in the audience, how am I think, Oh, this sounds a bit like this person. And that's how productions innovate and evolve. And that's what I want to finish with talking about this episode is how Romeo and Juliet is continuously evolving and really striking a chord with each time that it finds itself in people who say that Shakespeare is timeless. And I hesitate to fully throw myself behind that because Shakespeare, obviously is a product of his time. And there are certain things in Shakespeare that that are very of that time period. And that helps us to understand how the plays were written and what kind of things were would appeal to audiences that time what kind of hopes and dreams and fears they had, like the plague, for example. I mean, plague is something that has very recently come into a lot of our lives. But, you know, actually, generally, it's not something we would have thought about before this particular event. But the thing about Romeo and Juliet, I think, is that it really delves into real characters that we can connect with and understand, like we talked about Romeo and Juliet, teenagers, we all know, teenagers. And it talks about divisions as well. So I think, you know, we've seen it time and time again, how companies and productions have taken on and explored this theme of love across barriers. So whether that's religion, sexuality, ethnicity, disability, language, politics, class, anything, I think that as long as there are things that divide us, there's going to be opportunities to perform Romeo and Juliet. And I think it appeals to people because it's not the morality tale that Brooke presents in his poem, it's not telling us how to think is it's it presenting characters to us. And they and we react to them because they're messy, because because they're not clear cut. They're not archetypes. The play itself is a bit of an oxymoron, actually, now that you think now that I think of it, it's both a celebration of life and life's beauty and life's potential. And it's a commiseration as well for the hardships and the pain that we do experience in life. And he's also got this rather satisfying cyclical ending, where does this feud that's been going on for ages and tragically, it's only the death Have the young lovers that brings attention to the fact that hope can exist beyond the violence and the constant cycle of aggression. And I think that's, that's that's the beauty for me is that it can strike a chord with anyone, anyone who's experienced delight and joy, but also a bit of tragedy as well. Thank you very much for joining me and tuning into this episode of the Bard with Bill Episode One, our maiden voyage into the seas of podcasting. And speaking of voyages. Join us next time as we set sail for the shores of illyria 12th night. What
Lucy Green:this podcast is brought to you by the handlebard. Please remember to subscribe and leave a review. It was produced by Tom Dixon and Paul Moss and researched and voiced by William Ross Fawcett. It was introduced by me, Lucy Green, and the music was created and performed by Guy Hughes. To find out more about the handlebards, just head over to our website handlebards.com or follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Just search@Handlebards