notes for teachers

35 Pages·2008·0.14 MB·English

by  Camilla Rountree

NOTES FOR TEACHERS

SHAKESPEARE’S R&J
ADAPTED BY JOE CALARCO
AND
SHAKESPEARE’S ROMEO AND JULIET

Shakespeare’s R&J -THE PLAY

Joe Calarco set out to write a play about passion and authority, also two core
themes in Shakespeare’s play “Romeo and Juliet”. Joe Calarco says “I wanted
to get to the essence of what I think Shakespeare is: passionate, violent, thrilling
and theatrical. By cutting the cast to four guys we’ve been able to explore the
way men interact and how they view women, sex and masculinity. The concept
of students in a private school was created in order to mirror Shakespeare’s
Verona and the stifling, repressive, forbidden world that Romeo and Juliet
inhabit.”

Romeo and Juliet’s Verona live is filled with danger. In Shakespeare’s play, it is
a city state in which two of the leading families are virtually conducting a civil
war. The servants of both houses brawl in the streets, elderly retainers are
roughed up and the young noblemen bait each other and are quick to fight to the
death with swords. The rule of Prince Escalus is absolute. He holds the security
of the city and the welfare of the inhabitants in his hands. Transgressions of the
peace result in severe punishment such as death or banishment. In this volatile
environment Capulet is keen that his allegiance to the Prince is secured through
an advantageous marriage for his daughter Juliet to the Prince’s cousin Paris.
Hers is a narrow world with few expectations of independence. As a good
daughter she accepts this is to be her fate – until she meets Romeo and falls in
love.

Like Romeo and Juliet the four schoolboys in “R&J” live in an authoritarian
environment; that of a restrictive Catholic boys boarding school. The school’s
hierarchy regards Shakespeare’s play as a subversive text and has banned it. In
a strictly moral reading of “Romeo and Juliet” it is possible to argue that it does
walk a dubious line. The lovers defy parental authority, they are deceitful to their
parents, have underage sex and in their blind and impetuous passion, are
caught in a web of deceit which finally drives them to commit suicide, an act
forbidden by Catholicism. Although this is a valid reading of the play we know
Shakespeare was sympathetic towards his lovers.

In the boarding school the students’ days are closely regulated with dull classes
in which their minds are shaped to fit into a narrow view of the role and influence
of women and of marriage. The students dare not defy the system openly but
like Romeo and Juliet, they do so at night. Their secret exploration of the text
opens up their understanding of love with all its passion, exhilaration and pain.
Shakespeare’s R&J Adapted by Joe Calarco 1
The meeting places of the lovers: a moonlit orchard, a balcony, the pre dawn
tranquility of Juliet’s bedchamber, Friar Laurence’s cell, the tomb, are matched
by the secret meeting place of the school students. The privacy of these spaces
is always under threat of invasion. Father’s, mothers and nurses can enter
unexpectedly and catch the lovers while the students face the danger of
discovery by school staff. In both Verona and the school, the characters live in
fear. Discovery of Romeo and Juliet’s romance could lead to death for Romeo
and possibly for both. For the boys to be caught in their nocturnal activities the
outcome could be expulsion. For both parties privacy is hard come by and
fragile thereby creating an atmosphere of intensity and furtiveness. This in turn
heightens the thrill of the secret encounters and the urgency with which their
actions take place.

In “R&J” the students go through the motions of their classes until night and their
return to the play. Joe Calarco uses this device to mirror the impatience with
which Shakespeare’s hero and heroine pass the day. In Shakespeare’s plays
night is the time for lovers and Romeo and Juliet count the tedious daylight
hours as they wait to be together.

Joe Calarco describes “Romeo and Juliet” as ‘a fierce, dangerous tragedy about
sex, death, lust, betrayal, murder and teen suicide”. His inspiration was drawn
from Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” and William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies”.
“Both pieces deal with mob mentality which I think is a strong factor in the
energy of “R&J”, he says. “Romeo and Juliet” is in many ways about sexual
hysteria”. In “The Crucible” the “repression leads to psychosis” while in “Lord of
The Flies” violence erupts from the mob mentality engendered by being
separated from general society. By setting “R&J” play in the enclosed
environment of a catholic boys school where patriarchy is the governing force
and Romeo and Juliet is banned, the playwright creates a world which pulsates
with sexual hysteria and urgent discovery.

It is important that the play is seen as four students acting out “Romeo and
Juliet” and not trying to be the characters in the play. Each of the school boys
has an identity of his own which is brought to the role playing. The audience
watches as individually they experience a growing up, self discovery process.
“R&J” also offers the audience the opportunity to reassess the themes of
Shakespeare’s play in a way they may not have considered before.

“…it should radiate with a very young, very male, energy. … It also makes the
students’ acceptance of a definition of love without boundaries more moving and
monumental” says the playwright.

Shakespeare’s R&J Adapted by Joe Calarco 2
BOYS PLAYING WOMEN IN SHAKESPEARE AND R&J

The playing of women by men was an established tradition on the Elizabethan
stage. It was considered improper for women to be actors or even to work in the
theatre. In Shakespeare’s plays all female roles were played by young boys and
we know there were several in Shakespeare’s company. It is likely that the large
number of roles in his plays featuring women disguising themselves as men, is
due to this fact. Women did not appear on stage until after the restoration of the
monarchy in 1660. Many female parts continued to be played by men,
particularly character or comic roles such as the witches in “Macbeth” and the
nurse in “Romeo and Juliet”.

Again quoting from Joe Calarco, “Once the students get over their initial
embarrassment of playing women, they play the female characters ‘straight’.
They never try to become women. We were astonished… at how strong these
women are. They were written as powerhouses”.

ADDITIONAL TEXT IN SHAKESPEARE’S R&J

“R&J” also contains other Shakespeare passages borrowed from “A
Midsummer Night’s Dream” a play believed to be written about the same time,
and certainly premiered in the same year, as “Romeo and Juliet”. The play ends
with two sections of the prologue from a Midsummer Nights Dream chosen to
heighten the sense of the magical experience the students have shared. It is
interesting to examine how Student 1 uses the text to encourage the others to
continue the play. They answer with another speech from “Dream” thereby
emphasising that what they have experienced was no more than a dream and
that it is now over.

There are two Shakespeare sonnets used in “R&J”.
Sonnet #147
My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease;
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
The uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve,
Desire his death, which physic did except.
Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are,
At random from the truth vainly express'd;

Shakespeare’s R&J Adapted by Joe Calarco 3
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

The inclusion of this sonnet at the beginning of R&J sets up a preoccupation
with love. Student one (Romeo), is writing the sonnet into a notebook during
class. Student 1 (Romeo), mirrors the love-sick Romeo pining for Rosaline at
the beginning of Shakespeare’s play.

Calarco uses the second sonnet #18 in Friar Laurence’s Cell. Shakespeare did
not write a wedding scene and Calarco uses the sonnet to create one while
adding a subtle subtext to the relationship between Student 1 and Student 2.
Calarco uses the same sonnet again towards the end of “R&J” when Friar
Laurence hands Juliet the sleeping potion and we hear Romeo recite from
Sonnet #18. This reminds us of the wedding but also foreshadows the short
bloom of Romeo and Juliet’s love.

Sonnet #18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Interspersed with these Shakespeare texts are selections from a Victorian
manual on etiquette titled “The American Code of Manners”. The boys chant
children’s playground rhymes, the Catholic confession ritual and conjugations of
the Latin verb to love: amare “Amo, amas, amat amamus amatis, amant”.
Through these devices, Joe Calarco contrasts the conservatism of the school
with the free thinking fantasies of the pubescent boys. The world into which they
enter at night through “Romeo and Juliet” is coloured by love and its
possibilities, it is a way to escape into the forbidden and find expression for
repressed emotions and thoughts.

Shakespeare’s R&J Adapted by Joe Calarco 4
JOE CALARCO BIOGRAPHY

Joe is the adaptor/director of “Shakespeare’s R&J” which ran for a year in
New York and earned him a Lucille Lortel Award. He also directed the play’s
premieres in Chicago (5 Jeff Award nominations including Best Play and
Best Director) and Washington, D.C. (Helen Hayes Award nominations for
Best Play and Best Director). “R&J” completed a celebrated run in London’s
West End in late 2003, He directed the critically acclaimed world premiere of
the musical “Sarah, Plain and Tall” at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in New York.
He also directed Julia Jordan’s “The Summer of the Swans” at the Lucille
Lortel and directed Ms. Jordan’s play Boy for Primary Stages. He is an
Artistic Associate at Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia where he has
directed productions of “Urinetown”, William Finn’s “Elegies: a song cycle” (3
Helen Hayes nominations including Best Musical), the world premiere of
Norman Allen’s “Nijinsky’s Last Dance” (4 Helen Hayes Awards including
Best Play and Best Director), “Side Show” (4 Helen Hayes Awards including
Best Musical and Best Director), and the world premiere of his own play, “in
the absence of spring”, which premiered in New York at Second, under his
own direction As a writer, his adaptation of “Antigone” was work-shopped at
the National Theatre in London. He served as resident playwright at
Expanded Arts, Inc. for two years. He has been Joseph Papp artist in
residence at Second Stage, is one of New York Theatre Workshop’s "usual
suspects," and is a Drama League directing fellow. Graduate: Ithaca
College.
Shakespeare’s
ROMEO AND JULIET

THE SOURCE OF THE TEXT

“Romeo and Juliet” was written in mid 1596 when Shakespeare was about thirty
two. But it is not a play about love written from the jaded perspective of a mature
man but rather a play about youth and passion and the overwhelming force of
first love. It is possible the character Romeo reflects Shakespeare’s own
emotional state as the precocious eighteen year of lover of his older future wife.

Shakespeare based his version of the story on a long poem by Arthur Brooke
called “The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet” which was published in
1562, two years before Shakespeare was born. The author was already dead,
drowned at sea, when Shakespeare set about creating his own adaptation of it
so we do not know what he might have thought of Shakespeare’s retelling of the
story. But it is doubtful that he would have regarded it as plagiarism because
Brooke’s version was in turn taken from a French poem by Pierre Boaistuau
(1559), which was based on an Italian story by Matteo Bandello (1554). In 1562
William Painter had published an English translation of Boaistuau’s poem called
“Rhomeo and Julietta” which was probably a secondary source for
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Shakespeare. In any case it was standard practice amongst Elizabethan
dramatists to borrow their subject matter and stories from existing texts and from
other plays and books.

Brooke’s poem was written in a cumbersome form of rhyme called Poulter’s
Measure, a combination of rhyming couplets or Alexandrines, popular before
Shakespeare’s time in French and German literature, and Fourteeners or twelve
and fourteen syllable lines. The term was coined by George Gascoigne because
poulters, or poulterers, sellers of hens and eggs, would sometimes give 14 to
the dozen or a baker’s dozen. By contrast Shakespeare wrote in iambic
pentameter which is a form closer to every day speech.

But “Romeo and Juliet” was not straight translation from Brook’s poem to a
stage. Shakespeare made many important changes to the characters, the plot
and the chronology to make the play fast moving, youthful and dramatic. He also
compressed the time span from nine months to an action packed five days
In Shakespeare’s play Juliet sees Romeo on Sunday evening, they marry on
Monday soon after midday, an hour later Romeo kills Tybalt. He leaves Verona
at dawn on Tuesday and that same day Juliet is told she must marry Paris on
Wednesday. She drinks the poison on Tuesday night and is found dead on
Wednesday morning and is placed in the tomb that day and awakes on
Thursday morning to find Romeo dead beside her.

The other important change was to lower Juliet’s age from eighteen in William
Painter’s version, and sixteen in Brooke, to thirteen. This adjustment is a critical
factor in heightening the dramatic effect of the tragedy. Juliet is not yet an adult
and her innocence is in part, the explanation for the impetuousness of her
actions. Her father says ‘She is still a stranger to the world’ but on meeting
Romeo, Juliet is swept into life and out again before she has experienced it.

Two versions of “Romeo and Juliet” were printed in Shakespeare’s lifetime.
They are called Quartos. One was a shorter version of the play we are familiar
with and was possibly a text used by actors for playing as it contains many
stage directions. The second version appears to have been transcribed from
Shakespeare’s own drafts. It contains additions and edits and some lines have
been reassigned to other characters. It is most likely that Shakespeare made a
number of changes to the play following the initial performances or over a
number of years. This is the same process a playwright uses today to refine a
play during the preview period or for return seasons. For instance in iii 3, when
Romeo desperately threatens to kill himself, the contemporary text based on the
second version reads:

ROMEO;
O,tell me, friar, tell me,
In what vile part of this anatomy
Doth my name lodge? Tell me, that I may sack
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The hateful mansion. [Drawing his sword].

FRIAR:
Hold thy desperate hand:
Art thou a man?...

In the first version it is different:

ROMEO:
Ah tell me holy Fryer
In what vile part of this anatomy
Doth my name lye? Tell me that I may sacke
The hateful mansion?
[He offers to stab himself, and Nurse snatches the dagger away].

NURSE:
Ah!

FRIAR:
Hold, stay thy hand: art thou a man? Thy form
Cryes out thou art,…..
The substitution of a dagger for a sword and the intervention of the Nurse
underlines Romeo’s youthfulness. It is the kind of reaction a Nurse would have
when a child plays with a knife. In the later version Romeo draws a sword, an
adult weapon, and the Friar reminds him of his manhood. Through this minor
change the scene becomes more dramatic and Romeo is forced to act in a more
adult way. It is the second version that was reprinted in the First Folio (1623)

FIRST PERFORMANCES

The first performance of “Romeo and Juliet” was at the original Globe Theatre in
about 1595 by The Chamberlin’s Men, Shakespeare’s company of actors. We
know that Richard Burbage the principal actor, played Romeo and Will Kemp
the company clown played Peter the Capulet’s bawdy servant, while two of the
boy actors played Juliet and the nurse. It is always said that Shakespeare took
the roles of Friar Lawrence and the Chorus, but there is also evidence that
Shakespeare played Mercutio, the quick-silver and quick witted friend of Romeo.
The poet Dryden in his “Defence of the Epilogue” to “The Conquest of Granada”
(1670) says that ‘Shakespeare showed the best of his skill in Mercutio, and he
said himself that he was forced to kill him in the third Act to prevent being killed
by him.’ Dryden thought that the voice of this character was closest to the voice
of Shakespeare himself. The fantastic, fanciful and cynical view of love that is
the Queen Mab speech, is typical of the dramatist who could not present a
tragedy without comedy to highlight the absurdities of life.

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Peter Ackroyd in his biography of Shakespeare, describes him as “the poet of
speed and agility. His characters are not of the study or the library but of the
busy and active world. His is the drama of the sudden moment of change, and
one of his most powerful images is that of the lightening strike ‘which doth cease
to bee/Ere one can say, it lightens. (Romeo and Juliet 892-3) All the myriad
imagery, from the social as well as the natural world, suggests he was a man of
preternatural alertness. And he was well known, like the characters in his
comedies, for the quickness of his repartee.”

This description of Shakespeare’s personality could also be a description of
Mercutio with his eloquent and rapid conversation and clever, bawdy jokes.
Another reason to believe that Shakespeare may have written this role for
himself is that Mercutio was given a far bigger presence in “Romeo and Juliet”
than in the source material. In the second published version of the play
Shakespeare also elaborated on the Queen Mab speech. It takes an actor of
considerable skill to make this fanciful and poetic speech work dramatically and
Shakespeare was considered to have both the vocal power and the acting skills
to do it.

YOUNG LOVERS

Shakespeare may have lowered the ages of Romeo and Juliet to shock his
audience. To be involved in a physical relationship at such a tender age would
have been quite morally provocative to Elizabethans. But as he did so often to
‘get away with things’, the play is set in an exotic location and time; 14th century
Verona, Italy where it could be presumed morality was different and the
passions hotter like the climate.

It may well be that the canny entrepreneur in Shakespeare the theatre manager,
thought that the controversy caused by such young lovers would appeal to the
audience. The tragic end brought to their true and innocent love as victims of an
adult feud certainly evoked a level of sympathy that older and arguably less rash
lovers, would have. If Shakespeare was aiming to capture the immediacy of
youthful passion he certainly succeeded. The sudden infatuation that causes
Romeo and Juliet to risk their lives to be together, their secret marriage carried
out in haste with the knowledge that their parents would never have allowed it,
and their complete and unwavering commitment to either living as man and wife
or dying together, has the unreasoned madness of the very young. It is as
though not yet knowing the fullness of life or the finality of death, they rush to
experience both.

It is an interesting side note that if the dating of the play to 1595 were correct,
Shakespeare’s daughter Susanna would have been twelve years old. Perhaps
at the back of Shakespeare’s mind was a father’s observation of a daughter on
the brink of puberty. Perhaps Susanna displayed the headstrong passion and
strength that Shakespeare attributed to his young heroine. Whatever
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Shakespeare’s intention and inspiration, the tender ages of his lovers struck a
chord with the public. The play became a favourite and along with “Hamlet”, was
the most performed in Shakespeare’s lifetime.

TIME AND PACE

JULIET:
Gallop apace, you firery-footed steeds,
And bring in cloudy night immediately.
Come night, come, Romeo; come, thou day in night;
For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night,
Whiter than new snow on a raven’s back.

What could more eloquently express impatience than this speech? Juliet cannot
wait for night to come so Romeo can be with her and they can consummate
their marriage. Throughout the play Shakespeare uses images of youthful
impetuousness to drive the action forward. We know the entire action takes
place in five frantic days and this is reflected in the rapidity of the events. Every
scene drives the action to the next with a little ‘comic business’ to divert the
forward rush of the story. Even the ramblings of the nurse are filled with
important information which contributes to the audiences’ knowledge. This
urgency is heightened by constant references to lightening, flight and speed.

Lightening is an image that Shakespeare uses constantly. Juliet recognises that
things might be moving too fast when she says:
Although I joy in thee,
I have no joy of this contract tonight.
It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;
Too like the lightening, which doth cease to be
Ere one can say it lightens.

Benvolio says of the fight between Romeo and Tybalt ‘And To’t they go like
lightening’. Romeo remembers the ‘lightening before death’ that men are said to
experience”.

Wings and speed are also used to underline the swiftness of the events.
Juliet is described by Romeo as ‘A winged messenger of heaven’ and Romeo
‘rides on the wings of night’.

Juliet counts the hours she must wait for the Nurse to return from meeting
Romeo and says ‘love’s heralds should be thoughts,
Which ten time faster glides than the sun’s beams
Driving back shadows over louring hills.
Therefore do nimble-pinioned doves draw love
And therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid wings’.
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And later in the same speech:
‘So tedious is this day
As is the night before some festival
To an impatient child that hath new robes
And may not wear them’.

Shakespeare is well aware that speed is a youthful quality and slowness that of
age. He uses this to great effect has Juliet say of the Nurse.
‘Had she affections and warm youthful blood,
She would be as swift in motion as a ball.’

Even the stage directions urge speed: ‘Enter Juliet, somewhat fast, and
embraceth Romeo’. Peter Ackroyd sums up Romeo and Juliet as “a play of
youthfulness, youthful impulsiveness and of youthful extravagance; it is a play of
dancing and sword –play, both measuring out an arena of energy with sudden
violence and swift transitions”.

The lovers rush into death with the same haste as their rush into love and
marriage. In the Capulet vault Romeo drinks the poison and says ‘O true
Apothecary!
Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die’.
As he falls Friar Laurence enters saying: ‘St Francis be my speed.’ Juliet wakes
and discovers Romeo dead beside her. Friar Laurence tries to rush her away
but she refuses choosing to commit suicide instead. Juliet hears someone
approaching: ‘Yea, noise? Then I’ll be brief. O happy dagger!
This is thy sheath; there rust, and let me die’.

The writer Adrian Poole calls the play ‘A hymn to youth, to passion, to speed, to
danger in which the characters live fast and die young’.

The passing of time is clearly marked through the play with descriptions of
dawn, morning, evening and night. The characters refer to the moon and the
sun and the heat of day or the paleness of morning. Capulet tells us it being late
at night when he sends his wife to tell Juliet she will be married on Thursday; the
Prince at the tomb reinforces the early hour: ‘What misadventure is so early up?’
Romeo and Juliet’s impassioned parting after their wedding night is all about the
time of day:

JULIET:
Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day:
It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear;
Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate-tree:
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.

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