David Blixt's Blog, page 3

ROGUE SERVER - Chapter 1

Joe Dibs reported for work feeling ill at ease. Something said to him on the way into the Director's office had his hackles up.

���They want an honest assessment,��� the assistant had informed him.

Oh Christ, no, thought Dibs.

An honest assessment was the last thing he wanted to be asked for. Having written the damned report, he'd hoped he had buried his findings in the most boring and technical language he possessed. Now he was going to be pressed for honesty? What had he done to deserve such unkind treatment?

It was just a month since the new administration came in, and suddenly working at the NSA was like navigating the Sicilian mob. Only the Godfather wore tacky suits and got his ideas from cable news and third-rate online rags. Expert opinions were a thing of the past. Only one opinion mattered, and that opinion swung with the holder's mood.

Entering the office of the Director of the National Security Agency, Dibs saw with dread that the presentation he was meant to give had an audience other than his boss. None other than the National Security Advisor himself. Oh shit.

Introductions were made, and his boss said, ���Mr. Dibs has been tasked into looking at these reports of Russian interference in the last election.���

���Alleged interference,��� said Dibs at once.

���Let���s get down to it,��� said the National Security Advisor brusquely. ���I really don���t have much time.���

He was quite right, he didn���t. He was being pilloried in the press for his ties to Russian interests. The fact that he had lied about his conversations with those interests prior to being sworn in meant that neither Congress nor the White House was willing to have his back. He was seen as weak, and therefore his desperation to cling to his new office rose like a stench from his armpits.

The Director raised an eyebrow. ���You requested this meeting yourself, Mike.���

That was further unwelcome information. Dibs felt himself begin to sweat inside his suit.

���True, true,��� admitted the National Security Advisor. ���Okay, Mr���Tibbs?���

���Dibs. Like, I���ve got dibs on that parking space.���

The National Security Advisor frowned. ���You���re not from Chicago, are you?���

���I lived there in college. I���m from Ohio.���

���Good. Red state. Okay, Mr. Dibs,��� said the NSA, emphasizing the D, ���let me hear your report.���

Wondering if he was about to end his career, Joe began:

���With the hack of the DNC last summer, I was tasked with looking to see if there had been any hacking done of the RNC, and the candidate himself. At the RNC, I did find some small hacking of email lists, but nothing on the scale of the DNC. And as I looked at the Republican candidate���s private servers, I found no trace of hacking.���

It was true. That he had found something was buried in his report, which he hoped to God the National Security Advisor hadn���t read.

Turns out he had. ���But you did find something unusual.���

���I would not say unusual,��� hedged Dibs at once, feeling the trapdoor creaking under his feet even as the noose looped around his throat. ���Uncommon, maybe.���

The NSA waffled his hand. ���Same diff. What was it you found?���

Shit. ���I found some low-level communications between a private firm and the candidate���s tower in Manhattan.��� He was careful to speak no names, in case he was being recorded.

���Uh-huh. What kind of firm was it?���

���A bank, sir.���

���And where is this bank located?���

Dibs paused, but there was no way around a direct question. ���...In Russia, sir.���

���The bank���s name?���

���Omega.���

���I see, I see,��� mused the NSA, distracted. ���When you say ���low-level���, what does that mean?���

���It was far from a constant stream of information,��� Dibs said hastily. ���But every day or so, late at night, some information tracked back and forth.���

���Is it random?���

���It does not appear random, sir, but random for a computer may seem calculated to us.��� Dibs was proud of that equivocation.

The NSA flipped open to a page in Joe's report. ���But these communications ceased.���

���They did,��� Dibs confirmed. ���A story broke in the press about it just before the election, and all signals between Omega Bank and the Tower ceased.���

Dibs paused, hoping that would be the definitive end. Of course, it wasn���t.

���But they began again,��� said the NSA coldly. ���From a different source.���

���Ah, yes,��� said Dibs uncomfortably. ���From, ah, another bank, though with the same umbrella company that owned Omega. Two days after the signals from Omega ended, these started up.���

���Same time? Same duration?���

���Yes, sir.���

���I see, I see,��� mused the NSA. ���Now, who owns the two banks?���

���I���m sorry, sir,��� said Dibs. ���That���s outside my brief. I was just told to look into possible hacking. And it does not appear that there has been any. There would have to be sustained activity for a hack.���

���So these communications between servers are not long enough to be a hack?���

���No, sir,��� said Dibs definitely, feeling a sense of relief. On the other side of his desk, Dibs��� boss looked pleased.

���Were they long enough to be messages?���

The executioner gripped the handle for the trapdoor. ���Messages?���

���Emails, you know. Instructions.���

Dibs spread his feet wide, hoping to avoid the drop. ���Instructions?���

���Yes, were these communications long enough to convey messages?���

���Yes,��� allowed Dibs slowly.

The NSA looked uncannily interested. ���Now we���re getting somewhere. Tell me about these servers in the Tower.���

���The servers in the Tower?��� It was a trick from his time in uniform. When confronted with an unhappy superior, do not play stupid, do not play toady. Play parrot.

���Yes, the servers in the Tower. What are they there for?���

���Well, I have no information about that, sir. I don���t have access to them.���

���Are they for business?���

���Possibly, sir,��� replied Dibs. ���Though the Tower has another set of servers for its business.���

Dibs cursed himself the moment he said it, and his boss raised his eyebrows. He���d volunteered information, and that was as good as bouncing on the rope around his neck.

���So they���re not for business. Are they used for video games?��� asked the NSA derisively.

���I don���t know, sir,��� said Dibs. ���It���s possible.���

���You have no idea what these servers are used for.���

���Sir, I did not have the authorization to hack into the candidate���s servers. I could only study the traffic flow of information.���

The NSA stood and began to pace, something no one but Dibs��� boss was allowed to do. But the Director said nothing.

���So, the Tower has these extra servers, and we don���t know what they���re for. These servers have been communicating in the middle of the night with a Russian bank. When they���re found out, a different bank takes up the signal instead.��� He rounded on Dibs. ���Those are the facts?���

���That���s what it says in the report,��� replied Dibs, as if he had not written it.

���Right. But we don���t know what these computers were doing.���

���No, sir,��� repeated Dibbs.

The National Security Advisor looked to Dibs��� boss. ���The Agency has no idea what these computers were communicating, do they?���

The Director said, ���No, Mike. Without access to those computers, we have no idea what they were saying.���

To Dibs��� surprise, the National Security Advisor cracked a slight smile. ���Then I think we ought to have a look. Don���t you?���

The trapdoor opened and the noose went taught.

Dibs was glad to see his boss at a loss, too. He left it for his boss to speak. ���Mike ��� you want the Agency to hack the President���s New York home?���

���No no,��� said the National Security Advisor, very swiftly. ���No. I am absolutely not saying that. In no way.��� Clearly he, too, was concerned about being recorded. Dibs found this reassuring.

���What I am saying,��� continued the presidential advisor, ���is that this is clearly a matter of national security. I mean, isn���t it in the national interest to know that the servers in the Tower are secure? I���m sure the nation will sleep better knowing that the First Lady and her son are not going to be compromised by some rogue computer trouble.���

This was patently ridiculous. Unless the servers in question came to life and began assimilating everyone in the Tower a la Warlock���s dad in the New Mutants, there was no direct threat to the first lady. Hell, it was costing over a million dollars a day to keep her and the little boy safe. Dibs wondered what he could do with a million dollars a day. Then the National Security Advisor spoke, and Dibs stopped wondering anything.

���Director, I���d like to second Mr. Dibs here to the Secret Service for the next week to look at cyber security in the Tower.���

���They have their own people,��� objected Dibs��� boss.

���I���m sure they won���t mind the extra set of hands. We���re all Homeland Security, aren���t we?���

That he said it with a straight face showed how short a time he had spent in his post. It was a common enough phrase to be sure. But whenever it was said, it was with a knowing sneer, or an eye-roll. The combining of all the different branches of national security in the previous decade had done nothing to aid the dissemination of information, which had been the stated goal. Instead inter-departmental rivalry was at its peak. Dibs was certain some of his colleagues were tasked to monitoring their neighbors down the hall.

���Look, I���ve got to run. A meeting on the Hill. Set it up, will you? Mr. Dibs, good report. I leave it in your hands.��� And he left without signing an order, thus keeping his hands off of Dibs��� transfer as neatly as if he���d never been in the room.

The door shut, and the Director and Dibs stared at each other.

���Coffee?��� asked the Director.

���Sure, Admiral,��� said Dibs.

Together they left the room. But instead of heading to the break room, they went down to the kiosk in the front lobby of the huge building. It was ironic that the least secure place in terms of safety was where one was least likely to be overheard.

Stirring creamer into his drink, the Director said, ���How are you feeling, Dibs?���

���Feeling?���

���You look a little run down. Might need a few days. There���s a nasty stomach bug going around.���

���Yes,��� said Dibs slowly. ���I���ve been a little queasy the last month.���

���I thought so. Hell, I���ve been living on Pepto since the inauguration.��� He frowned, worried that he���d spoken too loudly. ���I miss ships. So hard for anyone to hear you over the ocean. You know what���s going on.���

���No idea,��� said Dibs. It wasn���t true. But, much as he liked the Director, he was damned if he was going out on a limb. It was his neck that was about to be stretched, and friendship didn���t mean a thing these days.

The Director made a show of stirring his coffee, as if the creamer was refusing to mix. ���It���s pretty clear,��� he said softly. ���Mike���s going to be out in a few days. This is him trying to find dirt on the President in a last-ditch attempt to keep his job. He sends us in to poke around, and if we find anything, he leverages that with the President, who at this moment is not supporting him.���

���I see,��� said Dibs slowly.

���I know you do,��� said the Director sternly. ���And I can���t tell you how bad this would be for us. One whiff that were poking around the President���s private servers and we���re all out, and on trial in front of Congress. Watergate and Benghazi all in one. We���d be sunk.���

It was kind of the Director to say ���we��� and ���us���. Dibs knew perfectly well whose name would be on the indictment. ���So I���ve got stomach flu. Till the end of the week?���

���Maybe a little longer. You know how these things can drag out.��� Throwing away his over-creamed coffee, undrunk, the Director put an arm around Dibs��� shoulders. ���Don���t you worry. All we have to do is delay and he���ll be gone. I can tell you ��� there���s no problem here a little bureaucracy can���t solve.���

Dibs was foolish enough to believe him.

AMERICA FIRST - My Tom Clancy Novel

I'm a Tom Clancy fan (at least his early stuff, before he disavowed editors). Let me see if I can imitate him.

Nick Glenn, a young outsider CIA analyst, sees a troubling pattern. International leaks and campaigns of misinformation are coming at an alarming pace from unknown sources. First a weird campaign in England to break with the EU gets sudden boosts from unsourced, untrue media reports. Next comes an election in Germany, with the moderates losing to a right-wing party for the first time in decades. 

Working closely with a good buddy at the NSA, Nick discovers that all of the misinformation campaigns originate in Russia. He sounds the alarm bell, and his report goes up through channels - but not fast enough.

All this happens in the shadow of an interminable American election cycle. One candidate, a former Secretary of State married to a known philanderer, had previously denounced the most recent Russian election as being rigged. Her party's national headquarters is hacked, and the most damaging emails (nothing illegal, but a few that are scandalously personal) are slowly leaked at strategic times to the US press. It even appears that their headquarters has been bugged.

Nick checks to see if the other party is being hacked as well. This candidate is a second generation billionaire, a TV personality with a penchant for young women and high living. His campaign is marked by nativism, racism, and economic doomsaying. 

Nick finds no trace of hacking, but he comes up with something strange. A server in a Russian bank is regularly communicating with an old server in the billionaire's Manhattan tower. Nick can't discover what those communications are, but it isn't random. And when alerted to Nick's investigations, the server shuts down - only to have a new server start up and begin the exact same process with the same Russian bank. 

This information is taken to the FBI, but is ignored because the NY office is riddled with investigators who are more interested in sinking the former Secretary of State than in some unsourced CIA nonsense about Russia and servers. It's up to Nick to find the answers - even if it means working outside the chain of command. 

Beginning with a single piece of intelligence, Nick uncovers a plot meant to unravel Western alliances, destabilizing NATO, the European Union, and the United States government, all to return Russia to the glory it recalls from the height of the Soviet Union. 

It's too late to help England or Germany. But can Nick expose the plot in time to save the American election?

AMERICA FIRST by David Blixt

Think anyone would buy that book?

Give-Away Contest - Audiobook of STONE & STEEL!

Listen up, Quirites! Sordelet Ink is giving away 20 copies COLOSSUS: SWORD AND STEEL on Audible! Read by the inestimable Brian J Gill! All you have to do to enter is join the Sordelet Ink mailing list!

So what are you waiting for? This contest ends in a week! Visit www.sordeletink.com! (And, if you don't win, you can still get an audio copy by joining Audible! You can get it at Audible.com, or else on Amazon - click HERE!)

Silence is foo

Hey there. Long time no chat. 

On my end it's simply a matter of life being lived, theatre being made, kids being played with, and occasionally writing getting done. But as the Michigan Shakespeare Festival once again winds down (one week left to see the shows!), and life starts to return to normal, I am able to emerge from the bull-headed charge of the summer to share a crater-full of news. 

First - Something you can wrap your hands around right now - Sordelet Ink has released the first audiobook in the Colossus series. STONE & STEEL, read by my friend Brian J Gill, is now available exclusively on Audible and its sister platforms. Audio work accelerates this fall. We'll see how it all turns out, but you can find S&S HERE!

Second - There's a new edition of HER MAJESTY'S WILL out next month! In the four years since it was released I've done a little tinkering. The story has in no way changed, but the prose is a little tighter, there are a few more quips an puns, and some historical infelicities have vanished. But most importantly, I commissioned the amazing Jay Fosgitt for not only a rollicking new cover but also internal art! I love the old cover, and will forever - but I've been told it's too subtle. As you'll see from Jay's beautiful new cover, subtle has gone out the window! Also this edition has a two-page preview of the next Will & Kit Adventure, due out next year, just in time for...

Third - HER MAJESTY'S WILL, the Play! That's right, Lifeline Theatre in Chicago is adapting my little Shakespearean/Marlovian romp into a two-hour production of hijinks and hilarity. Adapted by one close friend, Rob Kauzlaric, and directed by another, Christopher Hainsworth, I cannot wait to see what happens to my silly tale in the hands of such masterful men. Get tickets HERE. Which leads us to...

Fourth - The next Will & Kit Adventure, which I hope to have done just in time for the play. So look for the continuing misadventures of Will & Kit next June! The title will be revealed at a later date - it has me laughing too hard right now to type it. 

Fifth - I'm currently drowning in research for four different novels, all of which are demanding attention. The next Star-Cross'd novel, CAPTIVE COLOURS, is there, as is the next Will & Kit. But so too is a novel that begins at the fall of Granada and touches on Cyprus, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Venice. And then there' the project I haven't announced that will likely be the one I finish first. This is my initial run at a female protagonist, and I've been waiting for an historical figure that excited my imagination. This one does, and how! Oh, and there's that pirate novel I've been working on, too. And I'm still hoping to finish the edits on the third Colossus novel, WAIL OF THE FALLEN, by the end of the year.

Sixth - (There's more? Yes!) THE MASTER OF VERONA and HER MAJESTY'S WILL are both just $0.99 on Kindle! So tell your friends that they can have some varied and vibrant summer reading to finish off their Augusts!

That's the book news from this end. If I have time I'll post a little theatre love, both for the terrific shows I've been a part of recently (not to mention the film that's going to Sundance), but also those coming up! Meanwhile read a book, write a review, and recommend to a friend! Those are the three best things you can do for any author! And I'm always more vocal on social media - find me on Facebook and Twitter!

Ciao,
DB

 

With A Little Help From Our Friends

I try never to presume on friendship. I don���t spam friends every time I have a new book out, or when I���m involved in a particularly good play (though ���Dry Land��� at Rivendell is very good). Truth be told, I���m pretty bad at this self-promotion thing. I hate marketing myself.

For my wife Janice, though, I will move heaven and earth. 

As most of you know, I met Janice on the stage of the Michigan Shakespeare Festival, playing Petruchio to her Kate in The Taming Of The Shrew. It has set the tone for our lives. We were matched up as Oberon and Titania, Beatrice and Benedick, and Macbeth and his Lady before we realized there might be something behind all this chemistry.

Janice is brilliant, far smarter than I. So when John Neville-Andrews stepped down as the Artistic Director of the MSF and asked if I would be interested in the job, I told him the person he wanted was Jan. The Board agreed, and in the last five years she���s built Michigan���s official Shakespeare Festival into an artistic powerhouse, winning a raft of awards and earning praise like this:

���There is no excuse for not seeing what remains the area���s best and most consistent staging of history's greatest playwright.��� ��� Detroit Free Press

��� The Michigan Shakespeare Festival seems to be going from strength to strength, at last becoming the summer destination event it was surely meant to be .��� ��� Detroit New Monitor

���I walked out with the realization that I may never again see this play done so well.��� ��� Lansing State Journal

���A tremendously talented ensemble has performed a simple, yet marvelous trick. By simply letting Shakespeare speak through them, letting his words pour over an audience like summer honey, every line and character is as enchanting as they were 400 years ago. The playwright's legacy is secured by those who perform him so well.��� ��� Encore Michigan

���This is as good a production of ���Hamlet��� as we���ve seen, and we���ve seen a few.��� ��� Detroit Examiner

���The Michigan Shakespeare Festival continues to attract and keep a core of talented performers and design staff, which contributes to the constant refining of the ensemble work as evidenced by this outstanding production.��� ��� MLive

Thanks to Jan, the MSF has grown its audience by over 60%, doubled the number of performances, and expanded to a second location.

MSF now boasts the support of such famous names as Dame Judi Dench, Stacy Keach, Olivia Hussey, Leonard Whiting, Julianna Margulies, and Harry Lennix. We call them our Festival Champions. The state tourism board loves us, bestowing the Pure Michigan designation and using us liberally in their state advertising.

One thing I���m particularly proud of: when Jan took over, the first thing she did was create a high school tour. The MSF now performs Romeo & Juliet and Macbeth to nearly 10,000 high school students each year all over Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana. Fully one third of those kids have never seen a live play before.

Thing is, I guarantee you���ve never heard any of this. The MSF is the state���s best-kept secret. 

I���m asking you to remedy that.

This year we can turn the corner in visibility and attendance. We need to raise some dough to do it, but I���m hoping to do it with a little help from my friends.

Here���s a little-known fact: Jan is always donating what she can to theatres. It���s never a large amount - $25 here, $50 there. But she deems it vital to support the arts. Because art is what keeps life worth living.

Be like Jan. Show her your support. Pay it forward. Join the ranks of our champions, and help us with an eye towards long-term sustainability. You know how hard it is right now in the arts, and in Michigan. We all need to stand together, and the arts can use all the friends we can get.

I���d also like you to join us at the Festival this summer for our 22nd Mainstage Season: As You Like It, Richard II, and the Michigan-premiere of The Killer Angels, Karen Tarjan���s adaptation of Michael Shaara���s Pulitzer Prize-winning book on the Battle of Gettysburg. I���ve seen the cast, and they���re incredible. Our designers are world-class, our composer is astonishing, and the directors are the best I���ve ever worked with. It would be a true delight to have you there.

Meanwhile, there are some links below. $10 will go a long way. Think of it as buying Jan a drink. And if you come out this summer, I���ll buy you one in return.

Here, she's standing behind me. Now I'm standing behind her.

Cheers,

David

Click HERE for the MSF 's Secure Donation page. 

 

Click HERE for the MSF's PayPal link.

 

Click HERE to donate to the MSF's Razoo Campaign.

 

Click HERE to buy tickets.

The Death of Benvolio

If you wanted to throw my whole theory about the cause of the feud out of whack, you could point out to me that Lady Montague does not, in fact, have the final death in the play.

I would answer with a nod, a sigh, a smile, saying, ���I know. Benvolio does.���

The first legitimate publication of Shakespeare���s plays was the First Folio. Put together by his actors after he died in a wonderfully mercenary attempt to raise cash, it sets down in print together for the first time the Bard���s most famous plays.

But there are discrepancies. Because of the expense involved in copying out a play, only the prompter or stage manager would have had a full text. Actors had their cues, their lines, and their stage directions, usually worked into the text. So when Condell and Heminges tried to put together 36 plays, there were several missing. Some they reconstructed by memory, or got lucky and the actors had held onto their rolls of ink-stained parchment (where we get the word ���role���). For some they had complete texts, thanks to a fastidious stage-manager.

And some were taken from the Quartos.

In publishing terms, a Quarto is the result when four leaves of a book are created from a standard size sheet of paper. Each leaf is usually printed on both sides, leaving eight printed pages in total. In Shakespeare���s time this was true, but there was another wonderful connotation ��� bootleg.

Today when a movie comes out there are always some jerks in the audience with video cameras, and a shaky version of the film shows up the next day on the internet. This happened during Shakespeare���s heyday, too. Pretend you���re an Elizabethan going to see, say, Measure For Measure. You���re rich, so you���ve got a seat in the balcony. Down the row from you some shifty-looking patron is sitting with a quill and inkpot, scribbling in a fast shorthand every word the actors below are saying. A week later you see advertised at a different theatre a play called, astonishingly, Measure For Measure. There are no copyright laws, no redress or remuneration for the playwright. That���s just the way it goes.

Sometimes a Quarto would be published by the author himself, but far more often a Quarto of some play would appear having been ���stolen��� as it were from a live performance. These Quartos sometimes have wild differences from the Folio versions, as bootleggers often could not write as fast as actors spoke. There were gaps that had to be filled in. If there are lots of these gaps, caulked in with low verse and poor rhymes, you get what is known as a ���bad��� Quarto.

What has all this got to do with Benvolio? Because in the First Quarto (the ���bad��� Quarto, the ���eeevil��� Quarto) of Romeo & Juliet, printed by Thomas Crede for Cuthbert Burby in 1599, Benvolio dies.

What? you cry aloud. How? Why?

Alas, we don���t know. Montague brings us news that his wife is dead. Then he adds, as if in after-thought, ���And young Benvolio is deceased as well.��� No word of how or why. All we know is that no one makes it out of this play alive.

I actually like this line. Several times now I���ve contrived ways to kill Benvolio in the latter part of the play. My favorite is to have him meet a girl at the Capulet party. Later, after Juliet has drunk her potion but before she���s found, Benvolio meets this girl for an assignation. They embrace, but she recoils at once. His sword-hilt is jabbing her. Sexily, she either removes his sword belt or unsheathes the weapon and lays it aside.

Just then, unseen by Benvolio, the two louts from the opening scene, Gregory and Sampson, creep up. Benvolio senses them, however, and puts up a desperate fight. But he���s unarmed and is quickly killed. It���s a nice parallel to the light-hearted melee at the top of the show. Then ��� ah-ha! ��� Lady Capulet arrives to pay off her three servants, who then remove the body.

Lady Capulet? Well, she���s already told Juliet that she���s planning to send a poison to Mantua and have Romeo done in. And she blames Benvolio for spinning a web of lies around the death of Tybalt, despite the fact that he spoke true. Would she let him, ���a kinsman to the Montague,��� live? I think not!

So there���s a peek at how my mind works, filling in gaps much like the bootleggers of Shakespeare���s time.

I could refute the claim that Benvolio gets the final death by saying that maybe he died days ago, while Lady Montague died this very night. Maybe she sensed her son���s passing. Maybe she killed herself for her part in the feud. Maybe she did in fact die of grief. Or maybe she and Benvolio had a sexual-suicide pact and leapt naked off of one of Verona���s forty-eight towers.

The world may never know.

The Weeping and Wailing Scene, or She's Not Dead Yet

Ask anyone who has ever played Lord or Lady Capulet, and especially any Nurse, to name their least favorite scene, and they���ll tell you it���s the Weeping and Wailing scene.

(Aside ��� actors almost always use short-hand when referring to a scene. R&J has the Opening Brawl, the Boys, First Juliet, Mab, the Party, Post-Party, Balcony, Friar, the Street Scene, Return of the Nurse, the Wedding, Mercutio-Tybalt, Romeo-Tybalt, the Quartet, the Engagement, the Morning After scene, Family Dysfunction, the Cell, the Potion, Weeping and Wailing, Mantua, and the Vault. I think there are only four or five scenes that don���t merit their own title)

The Weeping and Wailing scene is where Juliet���s drunk the potion, and everyone loses their minds, thinking she's dead.

I���ve long had a pet peeve about this scene, but it was my wife who really figured it out. Both of us come at it from the same place, and it���s the same thing that drives us both crazy. Most directors miss this. They forget one simple, true fact:

She���s not dead yet.

At the moment that her family discovers her, Juliet is in fact alive and well. Everything is going according to plan. Again, it���s the same plan from Much Ado ��� we���ll pretend she���s dead and everything will be all right.

So the family���s grief seems utterly out of place. The Friar knows she���s not dead. The audience knows she���s not dead. So why do we have to go through the motions of grief.

It was Jan who noted how badly written the grief in this scene is. Don���t get me wrong, Shakespeare can write grief:

Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince:
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

Or even later in R&J, Lady Capulet says:

O me! this sight of death is as a bell,
That warns my old age to a sepulchre.

Shakespeare���s grief is often like this ��� brief. As if the speaker lacks the words. Whereas the grief in the Weeping and Wailing scene is hardly brief:

FRIAR LAURENCE
Come, is the bride ready to go to church?

CAPULET
Ready to go, but never to return.
O son! the night before thy wedding-day
Hath Death lain with thy wife. There she lies,
Flower as she was, deflowered by him.
Death is my son-in-law, Death is my heir;
My daughter he hath wedded: I will die,
And leave him all; life, living, all is Death���s. 

PARIS
Have I thought long to see this morning���s face,
And doth it give me such a sight as this?

LADY CAPULET
Accursed, unhappy, wretched, hateful day!
Most miserable hour that e���er time saw
In lasting labour of his pilgrimage!
But one, poor one, one poor and loving child,
But one thing to rejoice and solace in,
And cruel death hath catch���d it from my sight! 

NURSE
O woe! O woful, woful, woful day!
Most lamentable day, most woful day,
That ever, ever, I did yet behold!
O day! O day! O day! O hateful day!
Never was seen so black a day as this:
O woful day, O woful day!

PARIS
Beguiled, divorced, wronged, spited, slain!
Most detestable death, by thee beguil���d,
By cruel cruel thee quite overthrown!
O love! O life! not life, but love in death! 

CAPULET
Despised, distressed, hated, martyr���d, kill���d!
Uncomfortable Time, why camest thou now
To murder, murder our solemnity?
O child! O child! my soul, and not my child!
Dead art thou! Alack! my child is dead;
And with my child my joys are buried.

Look at those exclamation points. Look at those ecphonetic Os. This is not subtle grief. These are not the heart-breaking words that rend the soul of the hearer. Rather, this is Italian opera.

Instead of giving each speech time to unfold, take all those speeches and overlap them. Let the characters embrace their Italianness. And suddenly the audience is laughing. As they should be! Because at the moment, everything is working.

This was my wife���s idea, playing off of my love for the end of the scene. Because it���s the end that convinces me the whole thing is supposed to be funny. How do I know that? Thanks to the musicians who enter with Paris.

(Second aside ��� I feel really bad for Paris. He���d be the hero of any other play. He���s a good guy, and his story arc is just awful ��� fall for girl, ask girl���s dad to marry her, dance with girl, get permission from dad, see girl at church, go to marry her and find her dead, take flowers to her tomb and get killed. There is nothing wrong with Paris. Hell, in an earlier version of the story Juliet is turned off by him because he has cold hands when they dance. Jilted for poor circulation. Just like everybody else, he���d simply star-cross���d)

Back to the end of the scene. Everybody leaves, except for the Nurse, the servant Peter, and the two musicians, who have the following exchange:

First Musician
Faith, we may put up our pipes, and be gone. 

Nurse
Honest goodfellows, ah, put up, put up; for, well you know, this is a pitiful case.

Exit

First Musician
Ay, by my troth, the case may be amended. 

Enter PETER

PETER
Musicians, O, musicians, ���Heart���s ease, Heart���s ease:��� O, an you will have me live, play ���Heart���s ease.��� 

First Musician
Why ���Heart���s ease?��� 

PETER
O, musicians, because my heart itself plays ���My heart is full of woe:��� O, play me some merry dump, to comfort me. 

First Musician
Not a dump we; ���tis no time to play now. 

PETER
You will not, then? 

First Musician
No. 

PETER
I will then give it you soundly. 

First Musician
What will you give us?  

PETER
No money, on my faith, but the gleek; I will give you the minstrel. 

First Musician
Then I will give you the serving-creature. 

PETER
Then will I lay the serving-creature���s dagger on your pate. I will carry no crotchets: I���ll re you, I���ll fa you; do you note me? 

First Musician
An you re us and fa us, you note us. 

Second Musician
Pray you, put up your dagger, and put out your wit. 

PETER
Then have at you with my wit! I will dry-beat you with an iron wit, and put up my iron dagger. Answer me like men: ���When griping grief the heart doth wound, And doleful dumps the mind oppress, Then music with her silver sound���-- why ���silver sound���? why ���music with her silver sound���? What say you, Simon Catling? 

Musician
Marry, sir, because silver hath a sweet sound. 

PETER
Pretty! What say you, Hugh Rebeck? 

Second Musician
I say ���silver sound,��� because musicians sound for silver. 

PETER
Pretty too! What say you, James Soundpost? 

Third Musician
Faith, I know not what to say. 

PETER
O, I cry you mercy; you are the singer: I will say for you. It is ���music with her silver sound,��� because musicians have no gold for sounding: ���Then music with her silver sound with speedy help doth lend redress.���

Exit

First Musician
What a pestilent knave is this same! 

Second Musician
Hang him, Jack! Come, we���ll in here; tarry for the mourners, and stay dinner.

They're joking! They're making light, as servants are wont to, of Tragedy. Only the audience knows this is no Tragedy, because she's not dead. If all goes according to plan, she'll awaken in Romeo's arms. And she does, which is where the real Tragedy lies. If we spend all our grief and passion here, then what is the end of the play about? No, this isn't about real grief, but displays of grief. Because we still have honest grief to come.

Shakespeare wanted us laughing at the end of this scene. And I tend to trust his instincts.

Tybalt's Ghost

It amazes me that, of the thirty-odd productions I���ve been a part of and the dozen more I���ve seen, I���m the only director to make use of these lines from Juliet:������   

O, look! methinks I see my cousin���s ghost ���    
Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body ���    
Upon a rapier���s point: stay, Tybalt, stay! ���    
Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.������   

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

It seems a wonderful (and obvious) device to have dead Tybalt enter, covered ���all in blood, all in gore blood��� as the Nurse describes him, and search for Romeo. It is also great motivation for Juliet to drink the Friar���s potion, which until that moment she has been talking herself out of doing. I���ve used this twice, and it���s frightfully creepy.

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

Charles Dvorak and Stephanie VanAlstine

 

The Window Scene, or I Hate Balconies

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

I guess it���s important that students read Shakespeare, just so long as they don���t understand it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And later:

BENVOLIO
Here comes Romeo, here comes Romeo.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which brings us at last to the Balcony Scene.

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

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

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

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

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

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

So I decided to scrap the balcony, and put the window Juliet���s standing in on the ground floor. And it worked, worked so very well. What I liked best about it was Juliet���s freedom, and the intimacy it allowed her to share with the audience. Juliet is a character forever put on a pedestal ��� by teachers, by readers, by actors, by directors, by audiences, who all think of her as the ideal young lover. Placing her high on some balcony away from the audience reinforces that, whereas I always want to undermine it.      ������   

Why undermine? Because she���s a thirteen year-old girl! She���s not some savvy, romantic ideal. She���s young, smart, funny, conflicted, bursting with too many emotions at once. She ping-pongs from thought to thought, emotion to emotion, bubbling over with more than she can express, and not all of it is demure or sweet (this leads into a discussion of the ���Juliet Trap��� where even the most talented actresses get caught up in playing the idea of Juliet instead of the character, which is much better. For some reason it happens much more with this character than any other). It was great fun to allow Juliet to match her metal ricochets with full physical freedom.

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

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

Now I���m the first to admit not every line is with me. Romeo has a reference to her ���being o���er my head.��� But there are two or three other reasonable interpretations to that line. Likewise, I found ways to stage ���One kiss and I���ll descend��� and ���I see thee, now thou art so low, as one dead,��� both lines from the Morning-After scene, by using the window and a couple steps. And the cords the Nurse brings? We used those to help Romeo get over the wall.

As I say, I���m sure I���m not the first to get rid of the balcony. But I went further with this idea than just putting Juliet on the ground floor. When Romeo ditches his friends, Benvolio says, He ran this way, and leapt this orchard wall.��� I thought, Romeo climbed a wall? Why not leave him up there?

Thus, for the first part of the scene, Romeo was up, and Juliet down. He descends before the initial love talk is done, well before her ���Farewell, compliment��� speech. And suddenly it was a scene I had never seen before.

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

Matt Andersen and Stephanie VanAlstine as R&J

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He listens until he can���t contain himself any longer and leaps out of the bushes, shouting, ���I take thee at thy word!���

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

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

I have four favorite comedic moments in the scene. The first two come relatively early, back to back, as she���s trying to compose herself after realizing he���s overheard her give away the game. She starts talking, and can���t stop. Think of a thirteen year-old girl going through the whole gamut of emotions ��� embarrassment, abandon, concern, trust, more concern, hope, more concern, posturing, self-doubt, chastisement of him, and more self-doubt. Imagine, too, a boy trying to open his mouth at each piece of punctuation, trying to get a word in edgewise:

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

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

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

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

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

ROMEO
What shall I swear by?

And Juliet says the sweetest thing:

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

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

Being stupid, Romeo starts to do it:

ROMEO
If my heart���s dear love--

JULIET
Well, do not swear:

Shhh. Don���t talk, pretty boy. You���ll spoil it.

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

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

ROMEO
O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?

JULIET
What satisfaction canst thou have to-night?

Self-explanitory - especially his totally innocent answer.

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

JULIET
I have forgot why I did call thee back.

ROMEO
Let me stand here till thou remember it.

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

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

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

Just like the scene.

Balcony or no.

Capulet Ball - To Mask, or not to Mask

Despite what Baz Luhrmann did in his film, the party in R&J is not a masked ball.

It was common practice in Renaissance Italy to show up wearing a mask to a party one was not invited to. Which is exactly what the boys are doing. Mercutio is even delighted to don a mask to a party he was invited to (���A visor for a visor!���), because it���s much more fun to crash a party than to be welcomed.

Why do I know it���s not a masked ball? Because Capulet makes such a big deal out of the boys showing up masked:

Welcome, gentlemen! I have seen the day
That I have worn a visor and could tell
A whispering tale in a fair lady���s ear,
Such as would please: ���tis gone, ���tis gone, ���tis gone:
You are welcome, gentlemen!

More, he remarks how much the boys in masks are going to liven his party, saying, ���Ah, sirrah, this unlook���d-for sport comes well.��� Unlook���d-for being the important phrase here. This was not a party to which everyone was supposed to come masked. It���s a large party, and only the crashers are masked.

A few lines later he asks a relative when the last time they went masked to a party:

Nay, sit, nay, sit, good cousin Capulet;
For you and I are past our dancing days:
How long is���t now since last yourself and I
Were in a mask?

Which brings us to the first of two references to The Taming Of The Shrew. Second Capulet (sometimes Old Capulet) tells Cap it���s been thirty years since they crashed a party in masks. Cap disagrees:

What, man! ���tis not so much, ���tis not so much:
���Tis since the nuptial of Lucentio,
Come Pentecost as quickly as it will,
Some five and twenty years; and then we mask���d.

So Capulet and Old Capulet were at Lucentio and Bianca���s wedding (which raises its own problem, seeing as those two were wed in secret...).

At the end of the same scene, as the revelers are departing, the Nurse identifies one of them as ���young Petruchio.��� Thus we have our timeframe ��� it���s been 25 years since the events of Shrew, and Petruchio has a son. It���s a lovely in-joke for anyone in Shakespeare���s audience who���s seen Shrew, and one that I keep alive in the short story Varnished Faces.

One last note ��� the last two times I saw the show, I thought the directors were brilliant (confession: one of them was my wife) in how they handled the Capulet Ball. Because it always feels as though the story has to stop so we can all watch a dance. Whereas these directors put the whole party offstage. The scene we see is on the Capulet yard, or garden, or somewhere just outside the party itself. Man, did that help.

Why? Because Shakespeare parties suck. In a cast with fifteen men and four women, it���s always a sausage-fest. In opera you have the bodies, but in most Shakespeare productions you just don���t have extra women to put in dresses for that one scene. Which means everyone is looking at Juliet, and Romeo���s fascination with her is less impressive ��� of course he noticed her, she���s the only girl his age onstage!

It also neatly deals with the issue of what to do with the party when Romeo grabs Juliet���s hand and begins to talk to her. Do the rest of the revelers freeze? Do they dance in slow-motion? Do the lights dim except for a pin-spot on the lovers as they perform their perfect (and perfectly lovely) sonnet? Doesn���t it make much more sense that Juliet is escaping the unwanted attentions of Paris by retreating to the garden, where Romeo grasps her hand? Doesn���t it make the Nurse���s line, ���Madam, your mother craves a word with you��� make much more sense, appearing from the house where the party continues. Shakespeare loved offstage scenes ��� the first conversation between Cassius and Brutus in Caesar is peppered with shouts and clamors from offstage. Why not here?

In both productions the choice to move the party offstage got savaged by critics, because once again people have built up an image of what this show is ���supposed to be��� rather than what it is. There is no reason for us to see the party, just people going in an out. I cannot tell you how much it helped take the air out of the play, moving it right along.

So, no masks except for the boys, and off-stage dancing. Those are the keys to a good party.

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