SWNOVELS Chapter Chapter Two
“But you should write it yourself,” Uncle Guillaume replied.
I was ecstatic when he agreed to the idea of my playing Romeo, but his immediate challenge threw me.
“I don’t know how to write music.”
“Of course you do. I hear you writing melodies all the time. Even when you practice your scales as we warm up, you add your own flourishes and make the music your own.”
His statement confounded me. Scales were not music; they were a chore. Nothing more than warming the throat.
“But that’s different, and this is a well-known play, Uncle,” I pointed out. “People know this story and expect it to be done as they’ve seen before.”
“Nonsense. The story might be familiar, but none of these people have seen the whole play. You’ve never seen the whole play. Half the characters are missing! It was written centuries ago to last three hours of stage time. In English, no less,” he added, “the ugliest and most exhausting of languages.”
I smirked despite myself. I was unprepared for this revelation. If I’d never seen my favorite story in its entirety before, what had I missed? My mind swam with thoughts about how much more I might learn of the lovers’ plight.
“We perform a thirty-minute version, and even that’s more than most of the audience can swallow. By adding music to the production, you would better help them feel all those emotions.”
Uncle’s observations came too fast for me to process, and I struggled to keep up with his line of reason.
“You know the words to the play, so set them to music. Pick your favorite melody and release the prose as a song. And if the words are too many or few, re-write them to fit. You know his story—you know what Romeo is thinking—the ideas he struggles with just before he finds Juliet on her balcony. Sing his song in your own way and let your music tell his story. Show Romeo’s heart to the audience, and they’ll be even more excited to watch him win the girl’s heart moments later.”
Regardless of my intimidation, the idea captured me. Could I do that? Take someone else’s story and rework it to become my own? But someone had already done that, I realized. Some Frenchman had taken several hours of an Englishman’s story and rewrote it to fit within a shorter production. And whatever he’d done had resulted in my favorite play. So why couldn’t I do the same? Why couldn’t I turn it into music?
“Don’t think about it. Just let it happen,” Uncle challenged me. “Romeo becomes enraptured after only a moment with the girl. He struggles to make sense of his emotions, but he knows he must speak with her any way he can. What do those emotions—that struggle to understand—sound like? Release that from your chest and sing the ideas he ponders. That’s how your song will come to you.”
Born to a life of crowds, I’d never felt nervous performing. My earliest memories were of singing alongside my uncle and clapping my hands to the beat of a drum. And when I learned to play this or that instrument and became part of the troupe officially, the moment felt as normal as sitting at the dinner table. But now, while Thérèse lined my eyes with grease paint, my stomach wouldn’t settle.
“You’ll do well,” she whispered, as if sensing the reason I couldn’t sit still.
I answered with nothing more than a shallow exhale.
Of course, I shouldn’t be talking to her. I’d promised her father twice I wouldn’t give anyone the impression we were somehow intimate. But she and her mother were in charge of the performer’s makeup, so what else could I do? It didn’t matter to me right now, anyhow.
The fenced-in circle directly in front of the stage was already full of patrons, and people were nearly ten deep beyond the perimeter.
To our surprise, the townsfolk of Saulieu had embraced our street parade without the slightest heckling. Whole families had emerged together from the town wall to seek a promised night of thrilling entertainment. And by the volume of their cries and applause, they were far from dissatisfied with what they paid to see.
The first play had finished, and under the full darkness of night, the Dubois brothers treated the crowds to juggling and fire breathing. The second play would start in moments, and I would become someone else for half an hour.
“You know all of the lines,” Thérèse whispered. “Is it the song?”
Again, I didn’t answer with more than a shake of my head.
“And even if you forget the words, your uncle said you can make up new ones as long as they make sense.”
I smiled at the look of sincerity in her large, liquid brown eyes.
“I just want it to start,” I replied. “The waiting is making me second-guess myself.”
Before I’d finished my sentence, the crowd erupted from the final crescendo that drew the segment to a close.
Thérèse shot me a smile and squeezed my hand as I rose to take my position.
When the applause died, the players began the next piece, and I heard Uncle Guillaume’s voice rise above them to sing, “Two houses divided, their ancient grudge unbroken…”
I moved to the small stairs at the side of the stage and waited with George and Henri. It would only be moments before Romeo and his friends entered and conned their way into the house of old Master Capulet, who was his father’s mortal enemy.
Henri and I had never spoken about what happened between us, or what my father did to me on account of it. I never learned if Father discussed the matter with Uncle Guillaume. We all seemed to proceed as if none of it ever happened. Standing beside him now, the closest we’d come to one another in a year, I felt the pain again for a moment before shaking off the memory.
I rose on my toes to peer into the crowd, whose faces were no longer delighted by the action but were concentrated and absorbed by the story. I felt Henri’s hand on my shoulder and instinctively shot up the stairs to begin.
To Benvolio’s jibes, I professed no interest in loving a woman. Back and forth, we played with each other on the idea of love and its divine importance.
“What else is love but a discreet madness?” I insisted.
“Because he’s a sodomite!” yelled a man from the far back. A small group of young men screamed in support, “Traveling sodomites! They want nothing to do with women!”
My body froze, and I lost all sense of time.
It was Henri who voiced Mercutio’s admiration for the female form and sped the play forward several lines until Capulet’s servant invited us inside.
“As long as you’re not rival Montagues,” the servant warned before letting us pass into the party.
While the scene shifted and ushers rearranged the stage to resemble a dining hall, I struggled to find my place. My mind swam with a hundred thoughts. Had Thérèse lined my eyes too strongly? Were my voice and gestures too effeminate? What had I done to make those men realize the truth about me?
“It’s nothing,” Henri said, catching my unfocused gaze. “Your first line is, ‘Who’s the lady who enriches that knight’s hand?’”
I nodded, grateful for how he brought me back to the present. When my cue arrived, I raised my voice with the deepest resonance I could create. With this, I offered a sly, almost indecent smile to the servant and remarked, “She teaches the torches to burn bright.”
I heard more than a few young women from the audience giggle, and the reaction emboldened me.
“Did I ever love before now? For I never saw true beauty until this night.”
When Old Man Capulet stepped away from his daughter, I approached Louise Simon, who stood alone as sweet Juliet. I walked up to her with feigned arrogance and caught her eye before taking her hand.
“If I profane you with my unworthy hand, let my lips smooth that rough touch with a kiss,” Romeo said. Then I drew her hand to kiss it, and a riot of giggles erupted from the women in the audience.
For a moment, I again felt in control. Juliet remained bashful as we traded insinuations back and forth, and I reveled in it. When Capulet became wise to our deception, and my friends pulled me away to escape, the audience roared with approval.
The ushers changed the stage back to the street outside Capulet’s house. There, I bid my friends to leave me behind. At their protest, I insisted, “How can I go forward if my heart is here?” And at my query, the players began the simple melody I’d chosen to deliver my next lines as a song.
My voice rose slowly, seizing hold of the music as I described how Juliet had awakened my heart. Falling into the rhythm, my tenor soared over the players to beg merciful Heaven for the world to change.
“Let our houses end their hatred, or let me no longer be a Montague.”
When Louise appeared on the short riser meant to be Juliet’s balcony, the music shifted to the bridge, and I released a cry from my soul.
“What light breaks through yonder window? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!”
Juliet began the next line, but the adoring screams for Romeo drowned out her voice.