Get Thee to a Nunnery: A Pair of Shakespearean Divertimentos

by David R. Slavitt

These two novellas are prose divertimentos, creating intellectual fun in the playful way they juggle themes, characters, plots, and ideas. In “Lorenzo's Book,” the priest who aided the star-crossed lovers in Romeo and Juliet tells the tale the way it really happened. The action is driven by the selfish plots of a clever Rosaline, a dull and clumsy Romeo, a spirited and lustful Juliet, and a bawdily Machiavellian Lorenzo, whose manipulations of the others change as rapidly as his goals, which range from becoming Cardinal of Venice to having Juliet for himself. In “Luke’s Book,” Measure for Measure is relocated to the Old West. The New Mexico territory serves as the backdrop for this quick-witted musing on the values of the western frontier.

224 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1999

About the author

David Rytman Slavitt was an American writer, poet, and translator, the author of more than 100 books.
Slavitt has written a number of novels and numerous translations from Greek, Latin, and other languages. Slavitt wrote a number of popular novels under the pseudonym Henry Sutton, starting in the late 1960s. The Exhibitionist (1967) was a bestseller and sold over four million copies. He has also published popular novels under the names of David Benjamin, Lynn Meyer, and Henry Lazarus. His first work, a book of poems titled Suits for the Dead, was published in 1961. He worked as a writer and film critic for Newsweek from 1958 to 1965.
According to Henry S. Taylor, winner of the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, "David Slavitt is among the most accomplished living practitioners" of writing, "in both prose and verse; his poems give us a pleasurable, beautiful way of meditating on a bad time. We can't ask much more of literature, and usually we get far less." Novelist and poet James Dickey wrote, "Slavitt has such an easy, tolerant, believable relationship with the ancient world and its authors that making the change-over from that world to ours is less a leap than an enjoyable stroll. The reader feels a continual sense of gratitude."