Disclaimer: The original characters and plot of this story are the property of the author. No infringement of pre-existing copyright is intended. This story is copyright (c) 2010 Dawn DeWinter. All rights reserved.

Romeo and Juliet:  The Inquest (A Black Comedy in Four Acts) – Act 1 

By: Dawn DeWinter

Act 1….  The ageing virgins meet

Normally I avoid public libraries.  They tend to contain two types of books I generally avoid:  fiction, which I have to be wary of reading lest it affect my own inimitable style and grammar; and non-fiction, which I’ve learned to regard as poorly written fiction. 

However, I do have my own small collection of books, which I keep on the top shelf of my big closet, the one with a crystal mirror with sapphire trim.  (OK, that’s what I’d like to have on the closet door, but I’ve had to settle for carnival glass.) 

As can be seen from these titles, I prefer the old classics:  John Cleland’s Fanny Hill, Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, and Terry Southern’s Candy.  I had another book, but I had to leave it behind at a public restroom at the Port Authority Bus Terminal because of police intolerance.  After all, we were consenting adults, and my gender transformation (before their very eyes) didn’t seem to bother the other two ladies, for they came from suburban New Jersey and were delighted that they’d have a “New York” story to relate to the girls at duplicate bridge.  I do wish I could remember the name of the book, for I know that the lord won’t mind if I were to acquire it again.

Finding the pages of my collection increasingly yellowed and difficult to unstick, I went looking for another literary gem for my collection:  My Secret Life by Anonymous.  I’ve often enjoyed his work before, going back to the days when I used to find paperbacks left behind in my favorite theaters near Times Square, now gone but not forgotten. 

And so, after deciding that I was spending too much time on-line reading about the sex life of trashy Hollywood starlets (whom I secretly long to be), I decided that I needed to give my entire body, my brain included, a lively workout by finding a first edition of My Secret Life.  Being short of funds, I knew there was no point in looking for one at Borders or Brentano’s.  Instead, I looked for this classic in a public library in midtown Manhattan.

The library’s name and location must remain confidential until it has improved its defenses against surreptitious entry.  While there, I chanced upon a faded parchment in the locked cage for the X-rated books.  (I can do anything with a hairpin but make my hair stay in place!)  Written in some foreign gobbledygook, I would have cast it aside had it not had a translation attached.  I chose to peruse it, as I hoped that I had found a literary classic, one which understands sexual mechanics in the way that Popular Mechanics understands automobiles.

After exhaustive study, I concluded that there was nothing naughty in the manuscript, as least in translation.  It didn’t belong in the X-rated section; it had simply been misfiled.  The manuscript rated no better than an M rating for mature.  

Generally, I pay little heed to such family-friendly fare, but this document intrigued me because it purported to be an official transcript of the inquest into the tragic deaths of the world’s most famous lovers – Romeus and Juliet.  The name Romeus will probably surprise, even confuse, many readers who know Shakespeare’s play about a romantic duo by the name of Romeo and Juliet.  What gives?  Am I mistaken about the boy’s name or was Bill Shakespeare, the pride of Stratford-on-Avon, England? 

Fair warning – I am now about to become pedantic.  I can’t help it.  Every so often the baleful influence of my seventh-grade English teacher Miss Grimsby bursts out.  She was a stickler for detail:  If I brought a note from home to excuse an absence on account of sickness, she insisted it include the Latin name for my alleged ailment (and this was in the days before every home contained a Latin-English dictionary for easy reference, never mind an on-line translator). 

And so, I’m going to use the next few paragraphs, as Miss Grimsby tiresomely would, to relate everything I know about Bill Shakespeare and his play about two teenagers whom he dubbed “star-crossed lovers”.  For those who can’t abide such cant, I advise you to skip ahead to The Transcript. (Its title is in bold print).  It may enlighten and amuse where I could not. 

And now for those who yearn to understand the true historical import of The Transcript (and for those with lots of time weighing on their hands – for example, the unemployed, government workers, and students at the beginning of a school term), I will now prove to the satisfaction of my own satisfaction that Shakespeare missed the entire point of the story of Romeo and Juliet.  He couldn’t even get the name of his male lead correct. 

His primary source for the play was The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke in 1562, which was itself a translation of the original Italian story.  While some might suppose that Shakespeare changed the male character’s name for rhyming purposes, it is far more likely, given Bill’s hasty, sloppy, unloving approach to his lost labors that he couldn’t read the note cards that he had created from Brooke’s text.  After all, there are lots of words that lyrically and romantically rhyme with “Romeus” – rhombus, nimbus, omnibus and detritus, just for starters.

Bill Shakespeare was far from being a careful scholar.   He made countless mistakes.  For example, he couldn’t settle upon a single nom de plume.  Sometimes he wrote as Francis Bacon, other times as Christopher Marlowe, William Stanley, or Edward de Vere.  You’d think if he was going to use an alias that he’d stick with one.  But that’s our boy Bill.  He never could keep his personal story straight.  As a result, people are confused to this day as to which persona – Francis Bacon or Christopher Marlowe? – was the gay monk and which, the Earl of Oxford, the film noir detective.

Bill was a notoriously bad speller, even getting his own name wrong.   But what was an “e” more or less to a literary genius?   The British king Cunobelinus he misspelled as Cymbeline, the king’s daughter Innogen, as Imogen.  It’s said by scholars in a position to know best that Bill named his child Hamnet after his play Hamlet, which was based in turn on the legend of Amleth.  Hamnet-Hamlet-Amleth – Shakespeare couldn’t be bothered to keep the name consistent. 

Bill wasn’t, to put it mildly, a details kind of guy.   Thus he called Othello a “Moor” when the brother was in fact called a “Moro” in Shakespeare’s source.  Sure, both words have the same letters, but “god” and “dog” aren’t exactly the same, are they?  (If they were, I’d have a hell of a time getting into Hades, when my time is up.)

It is also well known that Bill couldn’t even publish his own work without serious bungling.  The early quartos and folios (that is, publications) of his plays often differed markedly in length (Hamlet, for example, by 160 lines).  One imagines that his audiences never knew which version they were about to see.  (In one, the famous soliloquy starts off with “to bet or not to bet” as Hamlet speculates on whether he should make book on an early death for the uncle he’s thinking of killing.)

Why did the Elizabethans put up with such sloppiness from Bill?  Well, it’s because they weren’t Victorians.  Theirs was a different era, one in which audiences were so rowdy and boisterous that they probably didn’t even hear the lines.  They were too busy throwing oranges at each other in the mosh pit or wolf-whistling at the boys playing the female roles on stage.  (In other words, it was a bit like Provincetown today.)

While every Shakespearean play is full of mistakes, there is only one that truly merits the name “A Comedy of Errors”.  It is Romeo and Juliet.  When one compares the true story of the star-crossed lovers, as found in the official transcript of the inquest into their deaths by the Ninth Circuit Court of Assizes for the Region of Veneto, with Bill’s version, it becomes tragically apparent that Shakespeare must have had a serious drinking or drug abuse problem at the time that he was researching and writing his play about the Verona teenagers. 

Indeed, when later asked when he’d written the play, Bill couldn’t get any more precise than sometime between 1591 and 1595.   Only a gonzo journalist like Hunter S. Thompson or an acid freak like Timothy Leary ever lost track of that much time.  Obviously, that wasn’t tobacco that Bill was smoking! 

It’s significant that Shakespeare has long been known as “the Bard”.  Why significant?  Well, consider the fact that the word seems to have entered the English language by way of Scotland and the Scots regarded “bards” as idle layabouts – comparable to potheads or opium smokers today.  Accordingly, a Scots ordinance of circa 1500 ordered that “All vagabonds, fools, bards … and such idle people shall be [branded] on the cheek.”  Wow!  It’s no wonder that Shakespeare never dared sun himself at a beach resort in the Scottish Highlands. 

Sadly one must conclude that the Bard’s faculties had become so diminished in the early 1590s by drug abuse that he did not realize that the true story of Romeus and Juliet was far more tragical than the fable that he concocted.  Yes, as you will discover from reading the official transcript from the inquest, befuddled Billy badly botched the ballad of Romeo and Juliet.  

Fortunately, Bill went into de-tox (the place and year are as yet unknown) and his subsequent tragedies – Coriolanus, Cymbeline, Titus Andronicus, Timon of Athens and Troilus and Cressida – were, as a result, much better researched and compiled, and thus far more popular down through the ages than the tragically flawed Romeo and Juliet.

To understand the lost opportunity that the true story of Romeus and Juliet offered to Shakespeare and to the world of literature, this essay presents the transcript, edited to fit this screen, of the inquest into their deaths.  I have slightly modified the transcript that I found to make its language more comprehensible to North Americans.  If the story attracts enough readers to warrant extra effort on my part, I will later attach a glossary for British readers.  That strikes me as a fair thing to do, given that Bill is generally supposed to have been an Englishman (though his skills at story-telling and poetry point rather to Irish origins.)

The Transcript

[For the sake of convention, I have changed the original name of Romeus to Romeo wherever it appears in the transcript]

Court Herald:   Oyez, Oyez, this Court of Inquiry for the Ninth Circuit Court of Assizes for the Region of Veneto, presided by Escalus, Prince of Verona, is now in session for the purpose of absolving the Principality of any responsibility for the piteous suicide of star-crossed lovers Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet.  All rise while Our Noble, Infallible Prince enters and takes his throne.

Prince Escalus:  Please be seated.  The court calls to the stand Lord Capulet, father of dead Juliet … Is it not true, Capulet, that the origin of this tragedy may be found in the street brawling of your gang, the Sharks, with Lord Montague’s Jets?

Lord Capulet:  If it pleases you, exalted Prince, I believe that the tragedy has its origins in your decree that if anyone from our two gangs disturbed the peace again that he would forfeit his life.  I mean you certainly upped the stakes, didn’t you?

Prince Escalus:  My decree was reasonable, given your mutual rebelliousness.  You were fortunate that I didn’t torture you both for the previous three street disturbances.  Do you think it wise to use your testimony to inculpate me, your Prince and liege lord? 

[As the Exalted One grasped the hilt of his sword, Lord Capulet understood the folly of blaming a lawful decree for the deaths of the two teenagers.]

Prince Escalus:  I see by the way that you hang your head in shame and fear that you understand that it was not the decree, but Romeo’s inability to heed it that set the tragedy in motion.  I didn’t ask him to kill Tybalt, now did I?  Summon Benvolio, Lord Montague’s nephew, to take the stand. [Which was done].  Now tell me, Benvolio, did Romeo take part in the original fray?

Benvolio:  No, an hour before dawn I came across him in a sycamore grove on the city’s west side.  When I walked towards him, he ran into the bushes.  I was surprised at his action, since the area is a notorious lesbian cruising area because of its proximity to the dikes.  Lord Montague subsequently told me that Romeo frequently lurked in these woods before dawn.  Understandably, Lord Montague, unable to induce Romeo to explain his nocturnal prowls, bade me to discover their cause.

Prince Escalus:  And did you?  

Benvolio:  Yes, Romeo told me he had fallen out of love.  I then asked him in sadness to tell me who had made him so lovelorn.  Given Romeo’s fey mannerisms and secrecy, I feared he might name Tybalt or Mercutio, bless their souls.    

Prince Escalus:  Was either fair youth involved with Romeo? 

Benvolio:  I immediately realized the error of my suspicions when Romeo told me that he had fallen hard for a girl – yes, a girl – with Diana’s wit who was “in strong proof of chastity well armed,” and had never been harmed – that’s the word he used -- by Cupid’s “childish bow.”

Prince Escalus:  Is this Juliet we’re discussing?  [Benvolio nodded yes.]  But this is extraordinary, for she was thirteen and still a virgin?  Did that not make Romeo highly suspicious?  Did he not know that Verona has but two virgins older more elderly than Juliet, and both of them males?

Benvolio:  No, my liege, Romeo seemed to think it quite natural that a thirteen-year-old girl should refuse to listen to “loving terms” and consider a flattering lustful look as coming from “assailing eyes.”

Prince Escalus:  Extraordinary, simply extraordinary. 

Benvolio:  Yes, such words of praise for an old maid did cause me to wonder whether Romeo himself was that most unique of Veronese – a fifteen-year-old virgin.  A shocking thought briefly assailed my mind:  That Romeo might have been collecting mushrooms and not cherries on his midnight strolls through the thicket known as Satyricon Bush. 

Naturally, I asked him to confirm that his beloved had actually “sworn that she will live chaste.”  And yes, the girl, whom we now know to be Juliet, had “forsworn to love” and pledged therefore to die childless, her beauty cut “off from posterity.”  At this point, I suspected that Romeo had need of spectacles, since his beloved must be as ugly as a Neapolitan Mastiff for her to make such a self-denying vow.  

Prince Escalus:  Did you advise Romeo to forget to think of the girl?

Benvolio:  Indeed, my liege, I bade him to examine other beauties.  I even reminded him that Veronese males could, if freeborn Italians, ease their sexual tension before marriage with anything that moved.  But he failed to grasp my meaning, despite the presence of a nearby ass, which did bray loudly in loneliness. 

[Another murmur went through the courtroom, to be silenced anew by the saxophone’s blare.]

Prince Escalus:  I shall “ass” thee no more questions, Benvolio.  I recall to the stand the Lord Capulet.  Would you please relate your conversation, dear Capulet, on the very day of my edict with my kinsman Paris in which he did ask you to respond to his suit to marry your daughter Juliet?

Lord Capulet:  Apparently, Count Paris hoped that his promise of wedding suits for my entire clan would induce me to loose my paternal strings, but I reminded him that Juliet was “yet a stranger in the world” and would not be “ripe to be a bride” until two more summers had passed.  He retorted that, “Younger than she are happy mothers made.”  I then replied that young girls too “early made” into women did often suffer and die, and that, as Juliet was my sole surviving child, I wanted him to woo her; and if he did win her heart, he had my consent to their betrothal. 

To that end, I invited him as a guest to a soiree, where he might meet fair Juliet and the other ripening flowers of Verona.  Alas, I then foolishly bade my servant Brutus to invite the rest of the guests, whose names I wrote down on paper of linen fair.  [Weeping], I bid thee, my liege Prince, not to ask me what happened next.

[His Most Compassionate Excellency then called the servant Brutus to take the stand.] 

Brutus:  As I cannot read, I hadn’t a clue who old Capulet wanted me to invite to the party until I met two handsome young gents on Church Street.  Who were they?  I now know they were Romeo and Benvolio.  Romeo did me the favor of reading the invite list out loud for me to master.  In that way, I suppose he learnt of the party. 

But my lords, forgive me – I had no idea that he was a Montague or, given the way he looked and moved, that he even liked girls. That’s why I invited him to a cup of wine on me at The Black Cat Julius Tavern in the Marais district.  Methinks you know its back room well, my Prince, for no more than a low stonewall separates it from your palace. 

Prince Escalus:  Enough idle blather.  You are dismissed with prejudice.  Indeed, for your thoughtless role in this affair I banish you to my distant fiefdom on the isle of Mykonos.  Maybe there you will finally master your Greek.  Benvolio, it appears you must return to the stand.  Now tell me, dear youth, how Romeo did react to news of the Capulet party.

Benvolio:  I am afraid that it was I who suggested that he attend the Capulet party.  The reason being that the fair Rosaline, whom Romeo claimed earlier to love, would be dining there, along with all the admired beauties of Verona.  By comparison, the new girl would look, I said to him, more crow than swan.  Romeo replied that the all-seeing sun had never seen a beauty fairer than his new love since first the world begun …

Prince Escalus:  Did Romeo often talk that way?  I mean it’s rather affected, don’t you think?

Benvolio:  Why yes, my Lord Prince, Romeo had a gay spirit that oft affected me.  I persuaded him to crash the party by telling him that his newly beloved only looked good with no other girls around her.  That left him no choice, alas, but to check out her competition.  I have not further to add.

Prince Escalus:  Will the Lady Capulet now take the stand.  I ask you now to relate the conversation you had with your daughter Juliet and her Nurse on the day of the party thrown for Paris.  But first, so that we may have it for the records, what is the name of Juliet’s former Nurse?

Lady Capulet:  Name?  I know it not.  We’ve just called her Nurse as long as Juliet has been suckling on her teats – that is, for almost fourteen years.  I thought to stop the practice more than a year ago, but Nurse, saying that Juliet gained wisdom at her teat, swore on her own maidenhead that Juliet would be ready to suck on a man when the time came.  I had to take Nurse’s word for she knew Juliet far better than I did.  You see, Milord, I was much younger than Juliet when I first gave birth, and given my tender years, I was too shy to behold the nakedness of any of my babies.  After my first two children died in infancy from wearing too many swaddling clothes, I hired Nurse to take care of Juliet.  She alone ever saw my dear child undressed, even when Juliet’s body was washed for burial.  

Prince Escalus:  Well, the name of the Nurse can wait.  Pray tell us about the conversation with Juliet about my kinsman Paris.

Lady Capulet:   I asked Juliet how stood her disposition to be married.  She replied that she was not dreaming of such an honor. I then advised her that here in Verona ladies of esteem, younger than her, had already been made mothers; indeed, I gave birth to Juliet when I was younger than she now is.

Prince Escalus:  At age twenty-five you are surprisingly well-preserved.  

Lady Capulet:  Thank you, my liege, for your kind remarks to a lady with skin as sun-wrinkled as mine.  After chiding Juliet for becoming an Old Maid, I told her that “valiant Paris” sought her “for his love”.  Nurse piped up that Paris was a “man of wax,” which I took to be a compliment to his delightfully sallow complexion.  To Juliet I said that she would behold him at that night’s feast.  Try to see the beauty in his face, I advised, so that you may have the opportunity to share his gold.  In short, I encouraged her to be a young romantic.  Juliet promised to try to like to love Paris.  I thought that a promising start.

Prince Escalus:  Promising indeed, Lady Capulet.  I am yet amazed that a woman who was within a year of becoming a grandmother still has half her teeth.  In beauty you are truly blessed.  That must be your consolation at this doleful time.  I now call the Second Servant of the Capulet household to the stand.  Knave, what be your Christian name? 

Second Servant:  ‘Tis Second, for second child of my mother I was.  She stopped at eleven.  As I am too lowly-born to have a surname, Second Servant I am and will always be.  I understand that the Court wants me to report on what I heard Romeo and Tybalt say at Lord Capulet’s shindig. [The Prince waved assent.]  First I saw Romeo, disguised in a mask but unable to disguise his falsetto voice.  He was babbling – something about torches burning bright, jewels in Ethiopia’s ear, and a snowy dove trooping with crows.  I thought him feverish until I saw that he was drooling over Lady Juliet.  He said that he’d never seen “true beauty till this night.” I guess Romeo wanted his girlfriends to be mature and slightly tough with age; me, I like my meat to be tenderer.

Prince Escalus:  Silence!  Second Servant, I shall not have you defame Juliet, who was yet in her prime.  Tell us, knave, what Tybalt, Lady Capulet’s nephew, said when he espied masked Romeo, a Montague, lurking like a thief in the Capulet home. 

Second Servant:  Lord Tybalt said that he could tell by the voice – I guess because it was so high-pitched – that he had come across a masked Montague.  He asked me to fetch his rapier so that he might honor his Capulet kin by striking the intruder dead.  I then went in search of Lord Tybalt’s sword.

[Second Servant was dismissed so that Lord Capulet could report on the ensuing conversation with irate Tybalt.]

Lord Capulet:  Tybalt raged to me that a Montague, our foe, had come in order to make scorn of our party.   I then recognized young Romeo.  I advised Tybalt to let Romeo alone, for all of Verona regarded him as a virtuous and well-mannered youth.  I ordered Tybalt to be patient, taking no note of Romeo during the party.  After all, I didn’t want a duel to make a mutiny, an uproar, amongst our guests.  He obeyed grudgingly.  To learn what Romeo and Juliet said as they danced together, it will be necessary to interrogate that busybody Nurse. 

Prince Escalus:  I thank you for your testimony, Lord Capulet.  I now call the woman known as Nurse to the stand.  What be your Christian name, madam, surely it is not Nurse?

Nurse:  It is the only name I know.  My creator gave me none other.  

Prince Escalus:  It figures.  Nurse, tell us what you overheard when Romeo did Juliet first meet.

Nurse:  After saying that he’d profaned her holy shrine of a hand by touching it, Romeo begged to kiss the lips of my mistress Juliet.  She told him that he kissed “by the book”.  Taking that as a putdown, I intervened to rescue my good lady by saying that her mother craved a word with her. 

After fair Juliet left, Romeo quizzed me about her mother and learnt from me that she was Lady Capulet, chatelaine of the house.  Romeo became quite frightened and headed with his friends towards the red Exit torch.  As they were departing, my mistress Juliet asked me to identify the man who had flirted with her.  She said if he were married, she’d like to die.  I had to tell her that it was Romeo – and though he was definitely single, he was, alas, the only son of her family’s great enemy, Lord Montague. She wasn’t too happy, I tell you, to learn that, as she then lamented that her only love sprang from her only hate.  I took that to mean that she’d henceforth stay far away from Romeo.

Prince Escalus:  When he had already dared to enter her home?  That would be difficult to do.  Nurse, you are dismissed for now.  I now call to the stand the cat burglar known as The Phantom.  Yes, prop the Iron Maiden up against the wall.  The Phantom no longer has need of a chair.  But do open the Maiden’s door sufficiently to permit him to hear, to speak and to breathe.  Scurrilous knave, I order you to testify truthfully about what you overheard while you were waiting in the Capulet garden with your helmet, harness with belaying rope, axe, spring-loaded cams, karabiners, nuts, and quickdraws for climbing to the upper floors of the Capulet mansion after the family did fall asleep.  Be warned:  You will be water-boarded for any answer I do not like.  Herald, hastily do something about the blood oozing from the Iron Maiden, for I did not purchase the stain-resistant carpet from the Sieur du Pont. 

[Note from the Court Scribe:  The testimony of the Phantom, being somewhat muffled, may not have been precisely as transcribed here.  For the sake of concision this transcript also omits the coughs, the gasps, and choking sounds made by the witness before he lost consciousness.]

The Phantom:  Your lordships, I swear I will tear to tell the holy truth, but would it be possible first to remove the thumb screws?  No, well, it was, as I recall, Romeo who spoke first.  He was hiding behind the next tree over, like most teens so obsessed with himself that he didn’t notice a bad dude – that’s me – lurking less than nine feet away. 

I heard him say something about a light breaking through a yonder window.  Said window was to the west of us, but he said, presumably for poetic effect, that “It is east, and Juliet is the sun.”  After some nonsense about the moon envying the sun, he finally realized that his lady, his love, was flaunting her middle-aged bodice on the balcony.  Boy, did she ever look hot, considering that she was getting on in years!  Romeo next wished he was a glove upon her hand so that he might touch her cheek.  I have to admit that I was wishing I was a thong so that I could touch both cheeks.

[Let it be noted that the court was recessed for three hours at this point so that the Phantom might be stretched on the rack as punishment for talking dirty.  Waterboarding, though contemplated, was rejected inasmuch as the Phantom, dying of thirst, might welcome it.] 

The Phantom:  I beg forgiveness for having spoken luridly about the fair Juliet.  Should I resume?  Yes.  Thank God.  Juliet, not seeing the lad Romeo and me in the garden, asked wherefore Romeo art?  I didn’t quite understand that, but her meaning was clear enough when she called on Romeo to deny his father and refuse his name.  While I thought that wasn’t much to ask – you know, to ask Romeo to lose a wimpy name – Juliet said that if he swears her love, that she’d no longer be a Capulet.  Since that family is as rich as Croesus, that was promising a lot.  She next said it was but his name that was her enemy, and a name wasn’t all that important – it was not, she said, as important as a body part.  I knew what she meant, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. 

[The Court was now adjourned for two hours while the Pearl of Anguish was put into the lewd mouth of the witness, its four leaves slowly opened by the torturer’s screw until he promised to speak, as best he could without teeth, less luridly of maid Juliet.] 

The Phantom:  As I was saying, the Lady Juliet claimed that names weren’t all that important to her, although I daresay that if mine were Montague, Capulet or de Medici, I would not be perishing, bleeding from a hundred cuts, in an Iron Maiden today.  Prithee, Herald, do not shake the Maiden.  I shall bite my tongue.  What we call a rose, Juliet said, would smell as sweet if it were called stinkweed.  I thought to differ but kept my counsel, daring not to give my illicit presence away.  Anyway, Juliet said that Romeo would still smell sweet if he were called Rodney or Ronald.  That’s of course the way life is – the rich smell of frankincense, Chanel Number One, and myrrh, while we poor must smear ourselves with parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. 

[Once again the court was adjourned while the witness was slowly cooked in a cauldron of boiling water until he recognized the folly of speaking poorly of the rich, God’s favorite humans.  He was then returned to the Iron Maiden, his skin an eye-pleasing lobster red.  The Court alchemist subsequently observed that the flow of blood from the Iron Maiden seems to have been slowed by the Torture of Boiling.  Praise be to God! – our scientific knowledge does advance in mysterious ways!  The witness was advised that further misbehavior might lead to the ultimate punishment of having naked women writhe suggestively about on his body while mocking his religion and chastity.]

The Phantom:  I confess my sins and pledge to sin no more.  In the garden, Romeo spoke next:  He said “I take thee at thy word” and asked to be new baptized under the name of Love.  That were a good pickup line, weren’t it?  I couldn’t help but say “Ahhhh.”  Well, Juliet overheard him, as he surely intended, and she asked what man, hiding in the shadows, had stumbled upon her counsel.   After all, she thought herself to be alone in a secluded, walled garden. 

Calling her a saint, which I considered a mistake since saints generally don’t put out on the first date, Romeo said that his name was “hateful” to himself because it was “an enemy” of Juliet’s kin.  As most of you know, Romeo had a high-pitched voice, which she recognized even though she had never heard more than a hundred words from his tongue’s utterance.  So she asked if he weren’t Romeo and a Montague.  She wondered how he managed to scale the high orchard walls and why he tempted death, inevitable if her kinsmen judged him a Peeping Tom.  Romeo replied that “love’s light wings” carried him over the wall, but I, suddenly realizing that I had left my ladder behind, knew it for a lie …

Prince Escalus:  Hold it right there, villain.  Are you admitting that it was your ladder that gave Romeo access to the Capulet grounds, thus setting in motion the tragedy?

[The wretch known as The Phantom tapped a feeble yes with his shackled feet, thereby causing the Iron Maiden to tip over, giving fright to Benvolio and the ladies in attendance.  As punishment for this affront to the dignity of the Court and for violating Verona’s ordinance against leaving a ladder exposed and unlocked where it might be used recklessly by heedless youth, The Phantom was placed in a gibbet (a large metal basket) hung from a pole above the city dump, there to be exposed to inclement weather and voracious vermin for six days. He was the first witness when the inquest resumed.]  

The Phantom:  If it pleases your Most Merciful Excellency, I wish to thank You, and God, and the Commune of Verona for providing me with prostheses to replace the feet I lost while receiving just chastisement in the gibbet.  By protecting me from the bottommost spikes of the Iron Maiden, they have renewed hope that I shall still be respiring as my testimony is expiring. 

 [His Excellency Prince Escalus smiled beneficently, and with a gracious gesture bade the lowly criminal known as The Phantom to resume telling what transpired in the Capulet orchard.]

The Phantom:   If the court pleases, I shall not reveal the actual terms of endearment exchanged by Romeo and Juliet as I lingered in the garden.  I do not want to shock the women here present nor bore the adolescent males with what they might consider “the mushy part” or my tale.  It suffices to say that Romeo and Juliet agreed that they had fallen in love at first sight.  All I will say is that it’s not a good idea to swear true love on the moon, it being as inconstant as the tides.   

Prince Escalus:  Worm, who was it that first proposed they exchange vows of fidelity? 

The Phantom:  Why, Romeo it was, though Juliet claimed that she had given hers to him before he did request it.  Juliet, resorting to cliché, said her love for Romeo was as deep as the sea.  Until then, I had thought her too poetical for such a middling metaphor.  Oops, possibly I’ve said too much.

[The court was adjourned for several hours so that the vile creature known as The Phantom could be seated naked on top of the Cradle of Judas, so that its pyramidal apex did enter his man pussy.  As he slid ever farther down the pyramid, he did become stretched enough to make it impossible for him ever again to pleasure a Clydesdale stallion, Cretan bull or Korean male, at which point he agreed never again to criticize the poetic allusions of his social superiors.]

The Phantom:  My humble apologies to his Excellency the Prince and this Court solemnly assembled for being such a pain in the ass.  I am not used to speaking or being seen in public.  To resume my tale of woe – at least to me – Juliet told Romeo that if his love was honourable, his purpose marriage (rather than a roll in the hay) that he should send word on the morrow as to when and where she should meet him for the wedding rite. 

An elopement in other words.  Is that right proper for a noble couple?  Juliet promised to follow Romeo “throughout the world.”  They agreed, milord, for her to send someone at the hour of nine to be advised of his plans for their wedding.  Juliet then, worried that daylight might expose Romeo’s position to her kinsmen – or was it his youthful acne to her? – bade Romeo goodbye until the morrow by saying that parting was for her a sweet sorrow.  I thought that well said.  It even rhymed.  After Juliet went inside, Romeo said he was heading off to his “ghostly father’s cell” – shades of Hamlet! – his help to crave.  I know nothing more, Your Benevolent Excellency.

Prince Escalus:  Loathsome wretch, you are dismissed from further testimony.  Guards, return him to the dungeons, where his many puncture wounds shall be rubbed with salt and pepper so that he may yet survive.  Let it be known that as reward for his cooperation in these proceedings, that the pernicious worm known as The Phantom shall not be broken on the wheel, though death be the prescribed punishment for attempted burglary. 

Remembering the mercy shown by our Lord Jesus Christ to Dismas, the penitent thief on the second cross at Cavalry, I decree that The Phantom’s punishment shall be limited to the loss of one arm for possession of burglary tools, the loss of another for leaving the ladder unlocked, as well as his tongue for commenting on Lady Juliet’s poetical skills after promising never again to judge his social betters. 

Be sure to remind the villainous Phantom that blinding is the punishment for begging by the limbless within the city walls.  However, I am confident that he has learnt the errors of his way and shall return to bricklaying, the trade for which he apprenticed.  As I am totally exhausted by the arduous process of extracting testimony from the insect known as The Phantom, this inquest into the deaths of Romeo and Juliet is adjourned until the morrow.

End of Act 1 – Be sure to come back after the intermission to download Act 2, “Not another tranny!”

Romeo and Juliet:  The Inquest

By

Dawn DeWinter

Act 2 … Not another tranny!

Court Herald:  Oyez, Oyez, this Court of Inquiry for the Ninth Circuit Court of Assizes for the Region of Veneto, presided by Escalus, Prince of Verona, resumes its inquest into the pathetic suicide of star-crossed lovers Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet.  All rise while His Excrescent and Excursive Excellency takes his throne.

Prince Escalus:  Please be seated.  The court calls to the stand Friar Laurence, confessor to the Montague family.   Tell us, friar, about your encounter with Romeo the morning after the Capulet party for my kinsman Paris.  And lower your brown hoodie.  I want to see your lying eyes. 

Friar Laurence:  Blessed be everyone here, especially our most merciful Prince Escalus, who deigned not to cast the wretched sinner called The Phantom into the fire.  Soon after dawn Romeo told me that he and Juliet Capulet had exchanged vows.  He asked me to marry them that same day.  I thought this an ideal match as it might turn the rancor of the two households into pure love.  He then ran off, I knew not where. 

Prince Escalus:  Meddlesome friar!  By what right did you undertake to deprive Lord Montague of the dowry owed to him by the Capulet family for taking the maid Juliet off their hands?  At thirteen she was already costing Lord Capulet more for food and clothing than she was earning with her needlework, weaving, and glass-blowing.  You Franciscans have no respect for property rights.  Why you’re no better than a communist or obamamite!   But what else can one expect from a member of a religious order founded by a freak who believed that birds can speak like humans?   

Friar Laurence:  But they can, your High Mightiness – just the other day, I heard a crow caw out to me.

Prince Escalus:  An inquest is serious business.  Your last comment, friar, merits pun-ishment.  No gruel for you tonight.  You are dismissed to do penance in your cell.  I recall Benvolio to the stand.  Lad, tell us about your conversation with my kinsman Mercutio about Romeo on the morrow of the Capulet party. 

Benvolio:  Your Excellency, I was hanging out in the street with Mercutio, it being too hot that day to stay inside, as the servant who normally accompanied me with a fan was taking his annual day off.  Damn labor unions!  [Murmurs of hear, hear filled the court.]  After I told Mercutio that Tybalt had challenged Romeo to a duel, Mercutio lamented that Romeo, wounded by Cupid’s arrow, was not man enough to fight a duel. 

Prince Escalus:  Not man enough?  The only son of Lord Montague not man enough?  What a shocking thing to say?  Were those the actual words used?  Did they not make you suspect that all was not as it should be? 

Benvolio:  I am but a naïve youth, my Prince.  At the time, I assumed that Mercutio was Romeo’s butt boy.  What else was I to conclude after Romeo, having made several jokes about goosing Mercutio, said that his sweet sauce was well served in a sweet goose as broad as Mercutio?  The latter replied that a goose was better than groaning for the love of a woman.  Mercutio even told Romeo “You are what you are, by art as well as by nature.”  After a conversation like that, was it not reasonable to conclude that they were fuck buddies and that Mercutio was by Nature decreed to be Romeo’s woman until the right girl did come along?  I had no idea of how wrong I was. 

Prince Escalus:  Yes, if you had been wiser, you might have given us a timely advisory.  We might have imposed a more suitable match than Juliet on young Montague.  Benvolio, you are dismissed for now.  I call to the stand the Capulet servant known as Peter.  First, is that your Christian name, churl? 

Peter:  No, it isn’t.  I am called Peter because I have a rod as big as the first Pope’s wooden staff.  My birth name is Childeric, my sainted mother being a big fan of Childeric the Third, the last Merovingian king of France.  You know his story, don’t you Prince?  He was deposed in 751 for starting the rumor that John the Evangelist, the favorite disciple of Our Lord Jesus, was a crossdressing female who gave birth to a child of Jesus, whose descendant founded the Merovingian dynasty.  Childeric the Third even wore his hair long so that he’d look more like Saint John, that is, like a woman posing as a man.  Talk about crazy! 

Well, every fifth grader knows that the Pope ordered Childeric the Third to be deposed, his feminine locks to be shorn, and for the ex-king to be shut away in a monastery for the rest of his lunatic life.  Now, I ask everyone here, how would you like to be named Childeric in honor of the third king of that name?  After the First or Second Childeric, sure, but the Third?  You can see why I have wished to be called anything but Childeric. 

Prince Escalus:  What I see is a blasphemous fool who repeats the worst calumny yet conceived against our Lord and Savior.  Worse than that, you spoke familiarly to me.  And worst of all, you insinuated that there was something that you knew that I might not!  You are much too learned to remain a mere servant. 

I decree that you be enslaved, enchained and assigned to the Royal Galleys as a sous chef.  Any further impertinence from you today and I will deny you the right to decide which pound of your flesh you will pay to Lord Capulet for releasing you from his service.  You will still be able to call yourself Peter if you choose to lose a pound of foot, whereas I might target that foot-pounder between your legs.  Now tell us, slave, about Nurse’s encounter with Romeo on the morrow of the Capulet party. 

Peter:  Romeo told Nurse to bid Lady Juliet to devise some means to come to Friar Laurence’s cell that very afternoon for shrift – you know, Prince, to confess her sins to a priest as the Holy Catholic Church prescribes.  After making short shrift, the friar would wed her to Romeo.  Nurse promised that Juliet shall be there, adding that her mistress was being courted by a local nobleman named Paris, but considered him a toad.

Prince Escalus:  Slave, you surely knew that Paris is my kinsman!  How dare you debase him with such a word?  Guards, take this wretch away.  Before he is chained to a stove in the galleys, be sure to take his Peter to pay Paul, Lord Montague, for the service interruption.  Nurse can tell us whatever else this miserable slave might know, and she will appreciate her duty to speak well of her social superiors.    

Nurse:   Your Excellency, I swear that I will not betray the confidence that you’ve placed in me, just as I kept faith with my mistress.  Peter and I got back to the Capulet’s orchard around noon; the sun was sitting upon the highmost hill.  As Juliet demanded that the servant formerly known as Peter be sent away, there is nothing further he could have told the court.  I said to Lady Juliet that her Romeo had a face better than any man’s and legs that excel all men’s, and a hand, foot and body beyond compare.  I warranted that he was gentle as a lamb. 

Prince Escalus:  Did you not wonder, Nurse, at the beauty and docility of Romeo?  More like that of a woman than a man, was that not so? 

Nurse:  True and wise as always, my liege Lord, yet some youth are more fair in appearance than the fair sex, and I supposed Romeo, scarce fifteen years on this earth, to be one of them.  

I immediately got to the point:  after ascertaining that Juliet had permission to go to shrift that day, I advised her to hasten to Friar Laurence’s cell where she would find a husband ready to make Juliet his wife.  I then went to dinner, while Juliet headed off to the friar’s lair. 

[The Court was adjourned until the morrow so that Friar Laurence could return to the stand.  A day of fasting had improved his demeanor.]

Friar Laurence:  I take it that you want me to testify about the tryst in my cell between the teenaged aristocrats.  When Juliet arrived, they acted like foolish young lovers, their flowery words dropping on my ears like weeded paragraphs in a playwright’s circular file.  So I immediately performed the wedding rite, as I could see that these two kids were, goat-like, so hot to couple that I dare not let them be alone together until the church had incorporated the two of them into one. 

Page:  It is Page, Sire.  My parents called me Page so that I would not be constrained by my name when it came time to choose my gender.  And Page to a Knight I have become, even as my Knight has come nightly with this Page.

Prince Escalus:  And what, youngster, is your gender?  It is difficult to discern, given your beardless, painted, transgendered look of wearing a lavender dress with a triangular pink codpiece.

Page:  Today, my Lord, I am a man; but I can be a woman for you tonight if you so desire.

Prince Escalus:   More impertinence!  Ambiguous youth, you shall report to my chamber after dusk to learn of your punishment.  I can promise you that it will involve whips, chains and Extra Virgin oil.  I will be hard on you indeed if your testimony today is not pleasing to this Court.

Page:  I well understand, my Prince and Master.  The tragedy might have been averted had the days and tempers been less hot.  As Benvolio warned Mercutio, summer in the city maddens the blood. 

There arrived the Capulets led by Tybalt, who said he wanted a word with my more noble companions.  Mercutio responded that he was willing to give Tybalt a blow as well as a word.  As I knew from personal experience, and from listening at the door whenever Romeo, Benvolio or another youth replaced me in Mercutio’s bed, I understood that Mercutio was offering Tybalt, Verona’s most desirable stud, a blowjob. 

Prince Escalus:  Let me get this right:  Are you telling me that you deemed Romeo a homosexual?  How extraordinary! 

Page:  What else could I think?  He spent so many nights locked into Mercutio’s bedroom.  It was remarkable how often those youths completed the act, for I would hear loud, climactic sighs two or three times an hour.  Unusually for Mercutio, who normally was the soul of indiscretion, he even felt he had to lie about their long nights together; he said they were but playing cards.  This excuse showed no respect for my intelligence, for I know that no one can play “Go Fish” for endless hours and nights, and that was the only card game my master Mercutio knew.  I decided that Romeo was teaching him new tricks.  This one affair Mercutio wanted to keep secret even from me, I suppose because it mattered more than the rest.

From then on until Romeo’s demise, I assumed the boy to be a gay blade who covered up his sexual deviance by telling the world that he pined only for Rosaline, when the world – or most of it – already knew that Rosaline, a crossdressing male, loved only women.  And so, I was shocked indeed when Romeo married Juliet; I thought Mercutio his more likely mate.  Should I continue with the tale of Tybalt’s deadly quarrel with Mercutio?

Prince Escalus:  To be sure.  But do avoid aspersions against my kinsman Mercutio.

Page:  Alas, Tybalt misinterpreted Mercutio’s generous offer of a blowjob as a challenge to exchange blows with their swords.  And from then on, it was a tragedy of errors – such that even gentlemen might make.  Thus, when Tybalt opined that he was apt to give Mercutio a blow if given the opportunity, Mercutio nobly replied, “Could you not take some occasion without giving?”  I knew what generous Mercutio meant – that he preferred to give rather than to receive fellatio. 

But Tybalt thought he was being dissed.  So he struck back by accusing noble Mercutio of “consorting” with Romeo.  Mercutio apparently believed that Tybalt was openly accusing Romeo and him of being homos because he said, “Consort!  What, do you make us out to be minstrels?”

Being a gentleman, Mercutio was understandably aggrieved, for everyone knows the reputation that minstrels have for blowing on men’s flutes and boys’ piccolos.  Even so, Mercutio still offered his “fiddlestick” to Tybalt. 

Again, Tybalt, unaware of the most recent street slang, misunderstood Mercutio’s meaning as a threat.  Yet it was not a sword thrust but something harder, yet softer, that bighearted Mercutio was offering.  Benvolio, worried that they were making a public spectacle of themselves, bade Mercutio and Tybalt to withdraw to a private place.  Mercutio bravely said he didn’t care if men’s eyes gazed upon him.  I was mighty impressed that my Knight had the courage to flaunt his sexual deviance.  What a gay caballero he was!    

Prince Escalus:  But what of Romeo?  When did he join the conversation, if words spoken at such cross-purposes might so be characterized? 

Page:  It was at that very moment that Tybalt, seeing Romeo approach, said “here comes my man.”  Mercutio, jealous of Romeo’s affections, became most vexed, for it appeared that Tybalt was declaring Romeo to be his sex toy.  So Mercutio said he’d “be hanged” before he’d let Tybalt buy clothes – leather, satin, lace or denim, whatever – for Romeo.  When Tybalt announced with unnatural vehemence that he hated Romeo and considered him a villain, Mercutio probably concluded that he was witnessing a lover’s quarrel.  

What would anyone of noble breeding or dirty mind conclude after Romeo responded by twice publicly announcing his love for Tybalt, saying that he cherished the name Capulet as much as Montague?  Did that not sound like a proposal for a gay wedding and the assumption of Tybalt’s noble family name?  Certainly Tybalt would have considered it such, given the timing of Romeo’s open show of affection. 

After all, how else could Romeo’s words be interpreted less than a fortnight after Your Excellency, overruling the prejudices of the priests, parliament and people, did pronounce homosexual marriage henceforth legal in Verona?  Furious at the thought that Romeo might love Tybalt enough to submit to his husbandly authority and lusts, noble Mercutio drew his sword and forced a duel.

Prince Escalus:  Your story is endless; do be brief.

Page:  In brief, Tybalt killed Mercutio in a swordfight with the unwitting help of Romeo, who, trying to end a public brawl that countervened your order, good Prince, to the Capulets and Montagues to preserve the peace, gave innocent cover to Tybalt’s fatal sword thrust. Mercutio, dying, ordered me to fetch a surgeon.  That I did.  The Court will have need of Benvolio to know the rest.

[Prince Escalus bade Benvolio to take the stand after reminding Page to show up for suitably attired for chastisement after dark.]

Benvolio:  Even though he sent Page to find a surgeon, at first I thought Mercutio was making much ado about nothing.  But I realized my error when he told Romeo and me that we would find him by the following day a grave man.  That was a dreadful pun even for Mercutio; I knew then that his wits were failing him.  He then asked Romeo why the devil he came between the two duelists. 

Romeo’s lame excuse – that he thought it for the best – caused Mercutio to curse the houses of Montague and Capulet.  I imagine that Romeo felt as bad as the Disciple who reminded Judas of the location of the Last Supper as young Montague helplessly watched me help Mercutio stagger off to his death off-stage.  Off-stage!  How ignominious!  Surely Mercutio deserved better! 

As I was heading off, I heard Romeo moan that Mercutio, the ally of Your Excellency, had been mortally hurt on his behalf.  For sweet Juliet’s sake Romeo had allowed Tybalt’s slander to stain his reputation; her beauty had made him “effeminate”, with the result that Mercutio was forced alone to defend their impugned heterosexuality.      

Prince Escalus:  Effeminate?  Or feminine?  Which word, Benvolio, did Romeo actually use?  It may help us better identify the root of his demise. 

Benvolio:  Effeminate.  At the time I deemed it an accurate description of his cowardice, but I kept my tongue silent, for I did not want to add to his grief when I had to return to announce brave Mercutio’s death, which I did most poetically:  “That his gallant spirit had aspired to the clouds.”  Blast the luck – at this moment furious Tybalt returned.  In fire-eyed fury, Romeo challenged Tybalt to a duel, saying that one of them must soon join Mercutio in heaven. 

Tybalt once again accused Romeo of “consorting” with Mercutio.  What true gentleman of Verona, my liege lord, could suffer such a slight without swinging his sword at the slanderer?  Well, this time Tybalt lost, which was indeed unfortunate for him, since one must do better than bat .500 in duels to the death.   When I saw that Tybalt had been slain, I urged Romeo to be gone, because Your Excellency was certain to order his death if he were captured.  Calling himself “Fortune’s fool,” Romeo ran for cover.

Prince Escalus:  Are you confessing, Benvolio, that you counseled Romeo to take unlawful flight, making you an accessory after the fact?

Benvolio:  I do so confess and throw myself on your mercy.

Prince Escalus:  Given the gravity of your offense, if you were a commoner, Benvolio, I would have no choice but to order each of your limbs to be tied to a different horse so that they might be torn from your body as the horses are spurred to head off to the four cardinal points of the compass. ‘Tis a dire fate, too gruesome, I feel, to be imposed on a noble gentleman like yourself.  Due to your fine breeding, you have a more refined sensibility than an insensate peasant or craftsman and so would suffer far more than they from having your body pulled asunder.  That wouldn’t be fair, now would it? 

Accordingly, I waive the Punishment of Dismemberment and order instead the Punishment of Disengagement:  You are ordered to serve three days’ house arrest, the sentence to commence immediately after this inquest so that you may have the time and opportunity to do penance. 

[Murmurs against the harshness of the punishment meted out to Benvolio could be heard from the Ladies and Gentlemen in attendance; the Prince sternly demanded their silence before ordering Benvolio to complete his testimony.]

Benvolio:  An alarm was given that brought the Montagues, Capulets, their wives, and Your Excellency to the scene of the crime.  It was I who informed everyone that young Romeo slew Tybalt, the man who had slain Mercutio.  Lady Capulet demanded that, to be true to his word, the Prince shed the blood of Romeo to pay for the death of her brother’s child. 

I was impressed, Your Excellency, that you inquired instead as to who began the bloody fray.  It was Tybalt, I explained; Romeo did but avenge the death of your kinsman Mercutio.  Alas, Lady Capulet accused me of speaking false because I am a relative of the Montagues.  She begged you to give her justice.  Romeo, she said, must not live. 

[Lady Capulet called out, “I did not know about the marriage!”  Prince Escalus forgave her outburst on account of her grief for her daughter Juliet.]   

Benvolio:  You Capulet harpy, you forced the Prince to punish your daughter’s husband.  You caused their deaths! 

[The Herald called the Court to order, as the Prince, chiding Benvolio for his outburst, decided to take the stand Himself.]

Prince Escalus:  On that fatal day, after weighing the evidence and hearing the pleas of Lady Capulet and Lord Montague, I exiled Romeo from Verona and fined the two families heavily for the brawl that cost me a kinsman.  In that way I strengthened the finances of the Principality while restoring the peace.  True, I did say that if Romeo were ever found in Verona, that hour would be his last.  However, given the puny extent of this city state, I expected him to hang out in nearby Venice, Padua or Mantua where his family might yet see him from time to time.  Why did he not send for Juliet to meet him amongst the pigeons of the Piazza San Marco?   Dumb kids! 

[The Prince then called Nurse to the stand.  He bade her to recount the scene at which she informed Juliet of Tybalt’s death.]

Nurse:  I decided to break the tragic news to Juliet as gently as I could.  So, when I reached the Capulet garden I immediately said, “Ah, well-a-day, he’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead.  We are undone, lady, we are undone!  He’s gone, he’s killed, he’s dead.  O Romeo!  Who would ever have thought it?”  She responded quite unfairly by calling me a devil and accusing me of tormenting her.  She next asked whether Romeo had slain himself.  Whatever gave her that foolish notion? 

Prince Escalus:  Nurse, you have now called your dead mistress unfair and foolish.  I advise you to be careful of your tongue, lest you lose it.

Nurse:  Mum’s the word, Milord.  Well, I did do my best to calm her fears, telling Lady Juliet that I saw the wounds on his manly chest with my own eyes.  He was, in consequence, a bloody piteous corpse.  I swooned at the sight.  Once again my innocent young mistress did miss my meaning.  She thought I was speaking of Romeo.  No, I told her – it’s Tybalt who is covered with gore, an honest gentleman, the best friend I ever had.  He was an excellent ballroom dancer, you know.  Juliet still failing to comprehend the obvious, asked whether Romeo were slaughtered, and Tybalt dead.  She asked what storm it was that blew so contrary. 

This question I found odd indeed, it having been a delightful sunny day in Verona – except, of course, for the two murders.  Even odder was Juliet’s conclusion that if Romeo and Tybalt were both dead, then it must be the Judgment Day.  Milord, wouldn’t the day of the Apocalypse be a stormier one? 

Prince Escalus:   Ah, I do recall that you were the one who nursed Lady Juliet as a child.  Did she imbibe your folly with your milk?  In response to the foolishness of your testimony, although your tits be surely as withered as your forty-year-old bodice, for safety’s sake I decree that henceforth you never again wet-nurse a Veronese baby.  Go to Bologna to nourish, body and soul, the children of our foes. 

Nurse:  What, baloney?  I might as well be dead!  Your Excellency, if I resume my tale, you may yet forgive me. 

Prince Escalus:  By all means resume it, but I urge you to make the resumption a résumé. 

Nurse:  In brief, I told Juliet that Tybalt was gone and Romeo, that killed him, was banished.  My lady then waxed most poetical, speaking of serpent hearts, dragon caves, and fiends angelical, dove-feathered ravens, wolf-eating lambs and – most extraordinary of all – of damned saints and honorable villains.  To be frank, I thought her to be suffering from hysteria, a natural ailment for Juliet, an aging maid grown long in tooth and clitoris. 

Now that Romeo was banished, I full understood that she was bound to end up an old maid; and so I sought to please her by saying that there was no trust, no faith, and no honesty in the male sex.  They were all dissemblers, said I.  I was not surprised when my lady blanched at this word.  To restore color to her livid face, I wished that shame would come to Romeo for causing such woes.  Well, was I ever stunned by what my lady did utter next!  She wanted my tongue blistered for such a wish, for Romeo was not born to experience shame.  Shame, she said, would be ashamed to sit upon her husband’s brow. 

Prince Escalus:  Did I not tell you, garrulous crone, to give me a brief summary of your conversation with Juliet?  She who is lamentably dead has given me an idea of how to make you tell your tale more quickly.  This Court is adjourned until tomorrow so that the tongue of this chatterbox may be made less vigorous by being blistered by a heated iron taken from her own laundry room.      

[The Court resumed its session at 10 o’clock the following morning, with the witness bound in bandages and nursing a sorely swollen tongue. After it became evident that no one could now understand a word she said, she was excused so that Second Servant might take the stand in her stead.]

Prince Escalus:  Tell us, knave, how you came to be eavesdropping on the conversation between Nurse and Lady Juliet about Tybalt’s death?  Don’t deny that you did, for I have the transcript of your freely-sworn testimony after you were thrice ducked in Verona’s erstwhile duck pond, made vile these many years past by a massive oil spill by the BP (Better Pits) Olive Oil Company.  

Second Servant:  I never eavesdrop, Sire, but I feared the worst when I saw Nurse run into the Capulet’s garden muttering nonsense in a most hysterical way.  Is everyone positive that Nurse is too old to be sick from the womb?  She did so remind me of my wife when she has the PMS.  Mindful of my wife’s behavior each month, I feared for Lady Juliet’s safety and so lingered behind a bamboo tree in case she needed succor from me.  While there I heard Nurse challenge my Lady by asking how she could speak well of him that killed her cousin.

By speaking thus, Nurse surely forgot that Lady Juliet, now come of age, was no longer a small child for a servant to scold. Well, Lady Juliet put the old bat in her proper place, by asking rhetorically, “Shall I speak ill of my husband?  Shall I mangle the name of Montague, when it is my own these past three hours?”  Juliet knew without having to read the tabloids that her cousin Tybalt was the villain; he sought to slay her husband.  So it was not the phrase “Tybalt dead” that distressed her the most, but rather “Romeo banished”. Weeping, she asked for her mother and father.

[The lords and ladies attending the inquest did “ah” with compassion.  Ten peasants did chortle and one guffaw, and for their pains all eleven were lashed five times each after being duly advised of their constitutional right to remain silent while attending the tribunal.]

Second Servant (cont’d):  Nurse told Juliet that her parents were weeping over Tybalt’s corpse and offered to bring her to them.  Juliet declined the offer, saying that her own tears would be spent mourning Romeo’s banishment, inasmuch as it meant that she was destined to die a maid. To be most frank, Your Excellency, I considered her comments lacking in empathy for her parents’ grief, but then what else can you expect from a self-absorbed adolescent?

Prince Escalus:  Hold your tongue, knave, or I will have the guards hold it with a tight clamp.  Juliet was too well-born ever to act like an adolescent.  The Capulets have been quality in Verona since their ancestor, a bishop sworn to chastity and poverty, founded the family fortune and line five hundred years ago.  Look at Nurse, now sitting swollen and speechless, and consider well your future remarks about those people – I like to call them Alpha Males and Beta Females – whom God determined at the Big Bang would be born to rule lowly Omegas like you.  I suggest that you wrap up your testimony, knave, before you end up shroud-enwrapped. 

Second Servant:  Lady Juliet defied Providence when she told Nurse that death, not Romeo, would take her virginity that night.  Nurse, to my surprise, offered to bring Romeo to “comfort” Lady Juliet in her bedchamber that night.  Nurse even knew somehow that Romeo was hiding at Friar Laurence’s cell.  

Prince Escalus:  You are testifying that the Nurse knew that Romeo remained in Verona in disobedience to the edict of banishment?  And she did nothing to alert either the proper authorities or even the Lord and Lady who had entrusted to her the care of their only daughter?  

Second Servant:  When you say it like that, Milord, I do appreciate that Nurse could have behaved better.  Anyway, Lady Juliet handed her a ring to give to Romeo – I doubt he ever saw it! – and asked Nurse to tell him to come to Juliet’s bedroom to take his last farewell.  Nurse scurried off.  And so then did I.  That’s about all, Your Excellency.

[He was succeeded in the stand by Friar Laurence.]

Prince Escalus:  Friar, pray begin by telling us about your conversation with Romeo before Nurse arrived with Juliet’s ring.  

Father Laurence:  Its being an especially sunny day I was able to detect Romeo hiding in a corner of my cell, which at twelve square feet is far larger than a humble Franciscan requires.  I recall that a novice nun once lurked there, in the shadows, for three weeks without my knowledge. Or so I told my confessor.  My cell is so big that I’ve turned half of it into a Columbarium where I raise pigeons for their spiritual inspiration, animal companionship, and meat. 

Prince Escalus:  For failing to inform the secular authorities in a timely way of Romeo’s whereabouts, friar, you shall henceforth deliver half your pigeon meat to the palace.   Continue your testimony, keeping in mind that I am less gullible than a Franciscan confessor.

Father Laurence:  Calling Romeo a fearful man, I told him to come forth out of the shadows.  Alas, he slipped on the guano, which is perhaps why I soon decided that he was sour company indeed.  I told him that I brought tidings of Your Excellency’s decision regarding his part in Tybalt’s untimely demise.  I was astonished when Romeo said that death would be more merciful than the banishment you’d decreed.  I reminded him that there was a broad world outside Verona in which he could dally.  He replied that there was no world outside Verona’s walls but purgatory, torture and hell itself. Naturally, I reproved his sinful ingratitude for your kind mercy. 

Prince Escalus:  And how did Romeo respond?  Surely not with ingratitude?  A noble Montague, he knew better than to bite a helping hand like a mad dog or socialist servant.     

Friar Laurence:  Alas, I must report that the distressing events of the day had unhinged even his noble mind.  The death of Mercutio must have been hard for him to bear, so many nights had these two Knights spent together in Mercutio’s bedchamber. 

Prince Escalus:  Did he then speak of his love for brave Mercutio?

Friar Laurence:  Not in so many words.  But he was sore upset.  He then said that heaven was here in Verona where Juliet lived.  It would be hell, he said, not to be able to look on a girl that every cat, dog, mouse and carrion fly could daily see.  Flies could fly around his love, but he, Romeo, had to fly far away from her. 

Prince Escalus:  What an unsavory image!  Did he actually believe that Lady Juliet would in his absence become encircled by mice and flies?

Friar Laurence:  I fear that the gross condition of my cell may have set his mind to raving.  It is the fault of the pigeons; their waste attracts the flies that perpetually buzz ‘round my bald pate. And church mice are unavoidable cellmates for a poor monk.  To return to Romeo’s rant, he said that he’d rather be poisoned or knifed than banished. Out of fondness for the lad I called him a mad man and promised to lend him several books of philosophy so that he could come to accept his fate with the grim stoicism of a comely cabin boy alone on a ship with a Greek crew long deprived of favorable winds and maids’ favors.  Romeo rudely said that he had no need of philosophy unless it could restore Juliet to him or reverse Your Excellency’s decree. 

Escalus:  Did he wish my death?  That alone could reverse the decree of banishment.

Friar Laurence:  No, Milord, Romeo was well aware that he’d screwed the pooch and would have to leave Verona forever.  That’s why he fell weeping to the floor of the cell, wallowing in self-pity and pigeon dung, refusing even to take refuge in a dark corner when he heard someone pound on the cell door.  Fortunately, or so it seemed at the time, it was Nurse, who said through the door that she came from Lady Juliet.  Once inside, Nurse asked where Juliet’s Lord and Husband was to be found.  I replied, “There groveling on the ground, with his own tears made drunk.”  Nurse, after confirming that her mistress was behaving just as childishly, ordered Romeo to act like a man.  For Juliet’s sake, she said, rise and stand.  Still abased, Romeo asked whether Juliet now considered him an old murderer (as though she were more likely to forgive a young one). 

Prince Escalus:  Friar, even though a nun cohabited with you, your knowledge of women is feeble.  Of course, a young murderer is easier for them to forgive than an aged one, for how otherwise do you explain why public executions of handsome youth attract so many screaming, fainting teen girls, swaying to the executioner’s song?  

Friar Laurence:  I stand corrected.  To resume – Romeo inquired about his mourning wife. Nurse replied that Juliet did naught but fall onto her bed weeping for her dead cousin and for her absent husband.  Romeo, drawing his sword, asked me which part of him was most Montague; he would cut it off.  Afraid that he might do violence to that male part which a wife needed most, I adjured him to hold his desperate hand.  I accused him of acting unseemly like a woman and said that by railing thus against his pedigree and fate he was behaving like a woman.  If he slew himself to atone for Tybalt’s death, did Romeo not realize that he would with that same blow be slaying the love – Lady Juliet’s – that he’d vowed to cherish for all time? 

I told him that Juliet was joyful that he was still alive and that Tybalt, who would kill him, was instead slain.  And the Prince had decided that he should not be executed.  “How can you not appreciate, I asked, that a pack of blessings is the light load that Fate has put on your back to carry?  Happiness,” I said, “was courting him in her best array.” 

I then urged Romeo – remember, My Prince, that I had married the teens myself – to go to his love’s chamber, as was decreed by God, to comfort her.  But then, before the night watch start their patrols, flee to neighboring Mantua where you should live until we can find a time to publicize your marriage, reconcile your friends, beg pardon of the Prince, and call you back with twenty hundred thousand times more joy than you left in lamentation.  Nurse, advise Lady Juliet to persuade her household to retire early for the night and then to await Romeo’s coming.  Nurse thought my proposal quite learned, and Romeo did embrace it.

Prince Escalus:  Learned?  Perhaps it was that.  Certainly, if carried out, your plan would have forestalled the deaths of Romeo and Juliet.  I am still deliberating on your fate.  But pray tell, did Nurse give Romeo a ring?  Who in the gallery cries out?  Was that you, Nurse?  Do keep in mind that a tongue, once lost entirely, can never heal.

Father Laurence:  Nurse has no need to cry out.  I can affirm that she gave a ring to Romeo.  And she also told Romeo to go to Juliet at once so that he might yet depart for Mantua before the nightly closing of the city gates.  After Nurse had scurried off, I bade Romeo farewell and good night. 

Prince Escalus:  Friar, you are for now dismissed to fast another day.  I now call Bello Ragazzo, who was page to Count Paris.  Dear boy, your name suits you well; you are handsome indeed.  Though your Lord be slain, you have no cause to fear for your future, for I shall gladly add you to my personal service.  In the meantime, do tell us about the meeting you witnessed at which Lord Capulet agreed that his daughter would marry Count Paris.  

Bello Ragazzo:  My lord Paris had arranged to spend to spend an evening with Lord and Lady Capulet during which they might chaperone as he courted Juliet.  But Tybalt’s death caused Juliet to secrete herself.  Recognizing that a time of woe afforded no time to woo, my Lord Paris bade the Capulets good night while asking them to make a pitch for him to their daughter.  Lord Capulet said that he would forcefully tender the Count’s proposal of marriage to his daughter the following morning.  “She will be ruled by my wishes in all respects,” Lord Capulet promised.  He did not doubt that she would obey his patriarchal authority.  He then told Lady Capulet to go directly to the maid Juliet to acquaint her of my Lord Paris’ affection and to order her to be ready to marry him in three days time. 

I understood the reasons for haste:  Through the immediate marriage of Count Paris to his daughter Lord Capulet could make amends to Your Excellency for the death of your kinsman Mercutio while reducing his wife’s pain over the death of her nephew Tybalt by arranging for her soon to have a grandchild of royal blood.  My Count, in turn, would be able to deflower and command the most excellent virgin in Verona.  I can affirm his passion for virgins.   

[The proceedings were disrupted by several guffaws, apparently induced by the words “excellent virgin”.  Prince Escalus would have severely punished the offenders had they been possible to identify, but the rogues were taking care to cover their mouths with embroidered handkerchiefs.] 

Bello Ragazzo (cont’d):   Count Paris told me that everyone would have benefited by his early marriage to Juliet, especially the maid herself, who would thereby gain a husband old enough to pleasure and dominate her, as all women require and desire.  As the Count and I were quitting the Capulet mansion, I overheard Lord Capulet tell his wife to prepare Juliet for her wedding day.  A broad smile overtook the Count’s visage as he informed me that Lady Capulet would now explain to Juliet how married men and women do produce babies, and advise her as well of a wife’s duty always to put her husband’s sexual needs first, so that he should have less cause to chastise her with a cat o’ nine tails, a necessary accessory to any modern marriage.  “It does tame the shrew,” said my Lord Paris with a chuckle.   

[The gentlemen of the galleries signaled their respect for the dead Count’s sagacity by cracking their whips and beating off their sticks.]  

Prince Escalus:  Silence!  A hearty thanks for your delightful attendance at this inquest, sweet Ragazzo.  You will make a most pleasing addition to my household.  Do you know how to play the lute?  As David did for King Saul in Bible times, I need a comely youth to spend the night in my bedchamber playing the lute so that I may have relief from the worries of the day and be able to relax enough to sleep.     

Bello Ragazzo:  My Lord, I would consider serving you a truly great honor; and Count Paris did teach me to play his lute.   Even so, you may not want me to service you at night in your bedchamber, for some years past I changed my gender along with my name, which was originally Bella Ragazza.  Yes, I was born a male, albeit with a female soul.

Prince Escalus:  Not another tranny!  There are too damned many in Verona!  Bella, it would be most sinful to have a girl in my room at night, especially one dressed enticingly as a youth.  I still believe you should grace my household, but as a footman.  I do not want you anywhere near my head.  You are dismissed. 

This has been a most wearying, unsatisfactory day.  This inquest is adjourned until 10 o’clock tomorrow when we shall hear from Samson, a servant of the Capulets, who did betray his trust by hiding under the nuptial bed of Juliet and her new husband Romeo.

End of Act 2 – There will be a week’s intermission before Act 3, “A really dumb plan,” in order to give the audience an opportunity to fortify their stomachs by ingesting a meal or anti-acid. 

Romeo and Juliet:  The Inquest

By

Dawn DeWinter

Act 3 … A really dumb plan

Court Herald:   Oyez, Oyez, this Court of Inquiry for the Ninth Circuit Court of Assizes for the Region of Veneto, presided by Escalus, Prince of Verona, is resumed  for the purpose of absolving the Principality of any responsibility for the piteous suicide of star-crossed lovers Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet.  All rise while Our Noble, Nobbled, Noxious Nabob and Prince enters and takes his throne.

Prince Escalus:  I order the servant Sampson to the stand.  Be careful, oaf, of where you feel your way.  Granted, you’ve only been blind for a day, but you should still be able to find your way around a courtroom without groping from the chest of one young Lord or Lady to the next.  Court Herald, do drag Sampson – by his flowing mane if necessary – to the witness stand before he commits an outrage against a maiden.  And bind his arms behind his back for good measure.  Good, that should keep him from temptation. 

Now that you’re settled down tell us, knave, why you were hiding under the marital bed of Juliet and Romeo Montague, a violation of privacy so gross that you’ve already been blinded, lest you try again to watch a Lord pop the cherry of his Lady?

Sampson:  Your Excellency, I pray that you will allow me to explain my gross misconduct while I still have the balls to risk it.  Do I have your permission?

[The Prince waved his pinky finger in assent.]

My many thanks, you are a merciful Prince indeed. It’s all the fault of me mum.  Her name being Delilah, she insisted on naming me Sampson, the dude who never cut his hair.  That was okay for the original guy because he was a Sikh or something, but my long flowing locks have gotten me in constant trouble, especially around machinery.  I’ve also lost one servant’s job after another because of hair in the soup. 

Well, your lordship, I understandably became obsessed with watching how other folks with long hair avoided split ends and fist fights.  Sure enough, that which started out in my mind as scientific research ended up becoming a sick obsession.  I had unwittingly developed a sexual fetish, just as doctors Masoch, Freud and Shaman predicted I would. I consulted all three; that’s how desperate for a cure I was! 

The only one who made any sense at all was Freud.  He made me realize that me mum was at the root of all me problems.  So I killed her by bashing her head with a fetish that I’d carved from a donkey’s jawbone to please Dr. Shaman. 

Then guilty over polishing off me mum, I used the fetish as a paddle on me bum because Dr. Masoch explained that punishing me self would ease the guilt. He was wrong; ever since I fell in love with spanking myself with a donkey’s jawbone I feel extra guilty for being such a total ass.

I am truly a mess – an ass with a sore ass and a now broken ass jaw and tail bone.  To make things truly unbearable, the Capulets are threatening to cut off my balls if I testify about Juliet’s wedding night.  While part of me would get some pleasure from the abuse, the rest of me says that it’s better to beat off than to be beaten. 

Prince Escalus:  Testify freely, for I’ll not permit the Capulets to separate your testicles from your body.  I now command you to relate to us all that you saw and heard the night that Romeo first slept with his wife Juliet.  But first, you must tell us why you came to be under the bed.

Sampson:   Long have I admired Juliet’s hair.  I have even collected strands of it from her brush or pillow when she was fast asleep so that I might ponder their luxuriant beauty in the seclusion of my garret room.  As I was needing to replenish my supply …

Prince Escalus:  Replenish?  But aren’t the hairs from the head of Juliet likely to outlive you?  Why required you a new supply?  

Sampson:  Because, My Lord, when I punish myself for killing me mum, I first let my hair down; then I use one hand to grab me self by the short hairs; and finally I put on a hairshirt to protect my hairless back as I use a hairbrush with the other hand to beat my hairy ass within a hair’s breadth of losing consciousness.  Normally I turn not a hair no matter how hairy it gets; but sometimes I lose one of Juliet’s precious hairs down a hairline fracture in the wooden beam of the hair space I call my room. 

Prince Escalus:  Hare-brained, hairy-heeled oaf, if you don’t stop running off at the mouth about hairs, I shall set my Mexican hairless dogs on you.  You’ll have neither hide nor hair left after they’re through with you.

Sampson:  A thousand pardons, My Lord.  I was just trying to explain why I snuck into Lady Juliet’s room that night to collect a few hairs from her brush.  Normally she would have been sound asleep at such an hour, but instead her bedchamber was empty.  I then saw her standing on the balcony affixed to her room; ah, but her long hair did glow in the candlelight! 

She was talking to Romeo, asking him not to climb down from the balcony, as it was not yet near day.  It was the nightingale, she said, and not the lark that had just crowed.  Romeo replied that it was the lark, the herald of the morn, as the first light of dawn on the mountain tops did reveal. 

Then she made an outright lie:  you needn’t go yet, because the light came from a meteor rather than the sun.  I thought the lie most odd.  “Why was she so desperate to keep him from going?” I asked myself.  And why was Romeo so anxious to leave? 

Prince Escalus:  Do you have answers as well as questions? 

Sampson:  I will hazard some answers soon enough.  Lord Romeo told Lady Juliet that he’d ignore all the signs of the dawning day, if she insisted, even though he’d surely be taken and put to death.  “Come, death and welcome!  Juliet wills it so.”  Well, I thought that a definite conversation-stopper, as did Juliet, who then said “be gone, away!”  She finally admitted it was a lark that was singing so out of tune.  I dare say it was – its voice was definitely pitchy, like a contestant’s on Veronese Idol or, as Lady Juliet said, like that of a loathed toad. 

At this point, I heard Nurse’s footsteps in the corridor; that’s when I hid under Juliet’s bed.  Nurse told her young mistress that, with dawn now definitely cracking, Lady Capulet was coming to her chamber.  Romeo asked for a kiss before he left, and Juliet replied that it would be years before she’d again behold her Romeo.  The lad then promised to see her again.  After making some small talk about how livid their faces looked in the dying moonlight, the young couple said adieu. 

Prince Escalus:  I hear no answers from you.  And yet it is admittedly odd that Romeo and Juliet were discussing Veronese Idol at a romantic moment like that.  Gentlefolk don’t normally admit to attending that minstrel show. 

Sampson:  After Romeo disappeared into the garden, Juliet cursed fickle fortune and begged it to be fickle enough to send her man back ere long.  She then turned towards my hiding place and I got my best look at her.  First, I noticed that her hair was exquisitely combed, not a hair out of place.  Nor was her dress rumpled.  She looked like a woman waiting for her lover and husband to arrive, not one that had just seen him depart.  Struck by how neat and tidy Juliet looked after her wedding night with Romeo, I wondered whether there had been any sexual intercourse at all.  Romeo also looked immaculate.  Thinking back about the appearance of the bed as I searched it for Juliet’s hair, I realized that it showed no sign of anyone having lain upon it since the servants made it up the previous day. 

Prince Escalus:  So you are saying that you saw no evidence whatsoever that Romeo and Juliet consummated their marriage that night? 

Sampson:  More than that, My Lord.  I am convinced that neither of them even disrobed.  I would say that they spent the night like brother and sister – not your Egyptian or Ancient Roman siblings, not your Cleopatras or Caligulas mind you, but like brother and sister did in the time of Adam and Eve before incest became thinkable.  Do you want me, My Prince, to report the conversation between Lady Capulet and Juliet that I overheard while I lay trapped under the bed?      

Prince Escalus:  No, Lady Capulet will make a more trustworthy witness.  We are finished with you.  To Lord Capulet I say that while I assured this rogue that none shall cut off his manhood, I made no promise that the rest of him would remain intact.  Sir, I commend him to your custody, so that he may make amends for the wrong he has done your family.  You might wish to start with a scalping. 

Prince Escalus:  The court calls to the stand Lady Capulet to tell us about her conversation with Juliet the morning after Tybalt’s death and Romeo’s banishment.  Who, My Lady, spoke first?

Lady Capulet:  Why, it was I.  I said, “How now, Juliet!”

Prince Escalus:  Well said indeed.  And Juliet’s reply?

Lady Capulet:  She said that she was unwell.  I told her that her tears would not make her cousin live again.  Too much grief, I said, shows some want of wit.  I then explained that I intended to avenge her cousin’s death by sending a man to Mantua to poison Tybalt’s murderer.  She said that she abhorred hearing Romeo’s name without being able to wreak the love that she had for Tybalt on the body of the man who had slaughtered him.  Her sentiments I thought oddly put, but then teens do have trouble expressing themselves.  Juliet seemed pleased that I would wait for her to provide the poison that would be used to help Romeo to join dead Tybalt. 

I didn’t appreciate at the time that she was stalling for time.  Yet how could I have known that she loved the villain Romeo?  Had I known, I would not have said that I brought her tidings that her father had arranged a day of joy for her.  On next Thursday morning, I said, she would wed Count Paris at Saint Peter’s Church.  She replied that she was unwilling to marry a man who had not yet wooed her for a wife; she said she’d rather marry Romeo, whom she claimed to hate, rather than Paris.  Her obstinacy left me no choice but to put the matter in Lord Capulet’s hands.  Let him now relate what then transpired.  [And so the Prince agreed.]     

Lord Capulet:  My Lady informed me that Juliet refused to obey my decree of marriage.  I was amazed that she didn’t thank us for arranging a marriage with so worthy a bridegroom as a Count.  And a young, well-proportioned one at that!   Angrily, I called her a disobedient wretch and told her she either went to the Church to be wed or never look me again in the face.  I’d disown her to hang, beg, starve, die in the streets.  I feign would have hit her if had she not held her tongue.  Nurse tried to speak in Juliet’s defence, but I’d not hear her express treason against my patriarchal authority. 

When my own wife accused me of speaking too heatedly, I left the women to consider their position.  My wife soon joined me in our bedchamber where she said that her last words to Juliet, still entreating for a postponement of the wedding, were that she’d not intercede with me.  Even my wife had decided there was nothing more to be said:  Juliet either obeyed me or was no longer our daughter.  

Prince Escalus:  As neither Lord nor Lady Capulet overheard what Nurse and Juliet next discussed, I recall Nurse to the stand.  I am told that her tongue is sufficiently healed for her to speak.

[The testimony that follows had oft to be repeated so that the Prince and Court scribe could understand Nurse’s garbled words; even then, they may have differed somewhat from those here recorded.  To save ink and parchment, her testimony is set forth here as though she had no need to say things thrice.] 

Nurse:   Juliet asked me how if there was any way for her to avoid becoming a bigamist.  In my opinion, If noble ladies could have harems of males, if polyandry were legal in Verona, Juliet would have been soaring in heaven instead of sinking into despond.  She’d still be alive if this weren’t an uptight patriarchy, for we now know that Romeo could have satisfied both Paris and Juliet.  Theirs was a love triangle wrought in heaven. 

Prince Escalus:  Your opinion marks you as a feminist.  I advise you to show restraint.

[As her own words condemned Nurse as a feminist, His Excellency had no choice but to order her to be burnt at the stake as a witch.  However, to ensure that she would continue to testify in good faith, he advised his chamberlain to keep his death decree a closely guarded secret until the inquest had ended.  Thus did the Prince safeguard the natural, God-ordained, patriarchal order.]

Nurse:  I did forget myself.  The disease of menopause did undermine my ability to think clearly.  I apologize for acting irrationally.  Forgive my womanly weakness.

[The Prince waved a finger to indicate that she should proceed]    

Nurse (cont’d):  When Lady Juliet asked for some comfort, I pointed out that Romeo, being banished, and now a nobody, could never challenge her if she married the Count, a lovely gentleman.  I said she could be happy in this second match, which excelled her first, who was as good as dead.  You live here and are of no use to him, that’s what I said.   Lady Juliet did thank me for comforting her marvellous much, but then said that she would go to Father Laurence’s cell to seek absolution for displeasing her father.  I told her that was a wise thing to do.

Prince Escalus:  Have the fevers of menopause destroyed your wits entirely?  Did you not understand that Father Laurence was the last one she should consult, given the friar’s prior lack of respect for the patriarchal rights of Lord Montague?  Bah, be off with you!  I now recall Friar Laurence to the stand to recount his meeting with Lady Juliet after she learned that she was betrothed to Count Paris, my kinsman.

Prince Escalus:  Yes indeed, foolish friar.  How happier all those but the banished would have been had you simply annulled her first marriage and escorted her yourself, by some ruse, to Saint Peter’s Church to be wed within the hour to a man able to make a woman out of her.  If Romeo did indeed spend his wedding night with his pants on, I should have banished him to the Greek Islands, where he would have men willing to make him as a man.

Friar Laurence:  Alas, instead I advised Lady Juliet to go home, be merry, and give consent to marry Paris two days hence.  Tomorrow night, however, she was to take a stiff drink laced with a vial of poison I was now handing to her.  Soon enough it would stop her pulse.  There would be no sign of life – not body warmth, not breath, not even her normally pink cheeks.  She would be stiff, stark and cold and appear like death.

Prince Escalus:  All right, already.  We get the picture.  Frightening friar, you really get off on talking about death, don’t you?

Friar Laurence:  Not me.  It’s Juliet who is the Goth.

Prince Escalus:  A Goth?  I should hope so.  All we noble families north of the Po River claim to be descendants of the Goths who conquered the Roman Empire nine hundred years ago.

Friar Laurence:  I like to think that my own ancestors arrived here as pilgrims on the same ship as the three Mary’s.  Saint Mary Magdalene, Saint Mary Salome and Saint Mary Jacobe – they were the first to witness the empty tomb of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Naturally, they were unnerved by the experience, and to calm their nerves joined their uncle Joseph of Arimathea (who provided Christ’s tomb) and one overworked, gypsy servant named Sara, on a Mediterranean cruise.  By wintering at Les-Saintes-Maries at the mouth of the Rhone River, the three Mary’s initiated the tourist trade in Southern France, for which they’ve been hailed locally as saints ever since. 

I’ve always assumed that they used the Holy Grail as a shared drinking cup on this trip, but had it stolen by the gypsies, who were already congregating in that resort to worship dark-skinned Sara, who must have looked really hot on the beach compared to the local palefaces and white bellies. 

Prince Escalus:  It all makes sense to me.  But are you prejudiced against “gypsies”, more appropriately known as the Roma? 

Friar Laurence:  How can I help myself?  Am I not a European? 

Prince Escalus:  I am no longer sure that you are, for did you not affirm that your ancestors first came to this continent aboard a shipload of Jews?  That would surely mean that they were Jews too.  I have been seeking a way to strip you of the Pope’s protection so that you might pay for your conspiracy against my kinsman Paris.  Maybe I have at last found it.  Or the Grand Inquisition will find it for me soon enough.  Laurence, is that not a Hebrew name?  But do finish your testimony, Friar Laurence, while there is yet time.

[The Prince took a moment to whisper something to his chamberlain, who then departed the courtroom.] 

Friar Laurence:  I do want you to appreciate that I never intended for Juliet to share a shroud with a dead man.  The manner of our county is that the dead are dressed in their best robes to lie uncovered on the funeral bier in their ancestral vault.  Well, maybe I shouldn’t over-generalize:  The one percent of the dead who come from families of quality end up thus; the rest are fortunate indeed if their families can afford to bury them naked in a shallow grave.  So I guess my plan depended on Juliet’s “dying” rich. 

Anyway, I promised Juliet that Romeo would come that very night to bear her hence to Mantua, where they would live happily ever after, as no one would have cause still to wish them harm.  Well, no one, if one overlooked her betrayed parents, his betrayed parents, vengeful cousins of Tybalt and Mercutio, Count Paris, Your Excellency, and anyone who spent money on either her planned wedding or unplanned funeral. 

My plan seemed foolproof – I told her that I would send a friar with speed to Mantua with my letters to Lord Romeo apprising him of our plan.  That’s about it for now, but I have more to relate later in these proceedings.  I advise, therefore, against excessive haste; it would make waste, my Lord Prince. 

Prince Escalus:  Friar, there is no fear of my acting in haste.  As the old mafia proverb, which is generally attributed to either Don Puzo or Don Klingon, reminds us, “Justice is a dish best served cold.”  You are dismissed from the stand but don’t leave Verona without our permission.  I now call Lord Capulet back to the stand to tell us about Juliet’s return from her visit to the friar’s cell. 

Lord Capulet:   Nurse saw Juliet first, saying that she came from shrift with merry look.  I asked where my headstrong daughter had been gadding about.  From where I have learned to repent the sin of disobedient opposition to you and your behests, she said, adding that Friar Laurence had enjoined her to fall prostrate before her father to beg permission.  “Henceforward, I am ever ruled by you.”  So did she boldfacedly lie.  She then went off to her bedroom with Nurse, supposedly to help her pick her clothes and ornaments for the wedding. 

After asking my wife to help deck out Juliet for the morrow, I walked over to Count Paris to advise him of the change in Juliet’s disposition.  My wife told me that she did not tarry long in Juliet’s bedchamber; nor did Nurse that night.  When I returned from the Count’s, I worked hard until dawn giving orders to the servants to ready the wedding feast.  In the morning, I sent Nurse to rouse Lady Juliet from her last childish slumber.

Prince Escalus:  It does appear that the Nurse will have to retake the stand.  Scribe, bring your table and chair close to her, so that you may master the meaning of her muffled mumbles. 

Nurse:  When I found mistress Juliet lying dead on her bed on the morn she was to be wed, I immediately summoned her parents to the chamber.  When Lady Capulet arrived, I could not tell her that her daughter lived no more, so I advised her to “look, look at Juliet”.  After pleading with Juliet to revive, Lady Capulet called for more help, whereupon Lord Capulet entered the bedroom.  I did my best to break the news gently to him, as fathers are closer than mothers to daughters.  So I said as calmly as possible:  “She’s dead, deceased, she’s dead; alas, what a day!”  Lady Capulet, deciding on a more direct approach, abandoned euphemism entirely, saying to his Lordship, “Alas, what a day, she’s dead, she’s dead, she’s dead.”

Prince Escalus:  Are you intimating Nurse that Lady Capulet, a woman whose ancestors once broke bread with Attila the Hun, would be so coarse and ill-bred as to repeat almost word for word what you, a dried-up wet nurse, had already said? 

Nurse:  Why not, if the words I said were worth repeating?  You needn’t look at me with stern visage, My Liege Lord, for you know that none dare harm me further until I have finished my tale of Juliet and Romeo.  If tortured, I will surely lose forever the power to speak.  Ah, you sit back on your throne.  Then I may proceed.

Lord Capulet spoke like a true gent after he checked his daughter for life signs:  “Death lies on Juliet,” he said, “like an untimely flower upon the sweetest frost of all the field” – or something like that.  Just then Friar Laurence and Count Paris arrived with the musicians, as though they all had been given an offstage cue.  Lord Capulet told the Count that Death had lain with his wife; flower that she was, she was now deflowered by Death, who would now be Lord Capulet’s only son-in-law and heir. 

These words most unnerved me; I looked around the room to see if perchance he had espied Romeo in our midst.  For was not Romeo death?  Everyone took another turn at waxing poetical over death and the maiden before Father Laurence told us to bear Juliet’s corpse to the church forthwith. 

Lord Capulet then showed us why he’s known as the financial wizard of Verona’s street at the wall by announced that all the things that he’d bought for the wedding would be used for the funeral.  The bridal flowers could, for instance, serve for a burial wreath.  It wasn’t going to cost him a penny to bury Juliet; he even persuaded Father Laurence to officiate over the funeral mass for free.  I never thought I’d live to see the day that a clergyman … 

Prince Escalus:  How dare you, witch, show disrespect to two fathers by calling the holy avaricious and the grieving miserly?  It is becoming crystal clear in this inquest that a failure amongst the servile class to pay the full respect due the master class is a primary cause of the death of the two teens. 

Perhaps we erred in feeding them meat.  I feed my servants exclusively a vegan diet, unless they serve in my bedchamber.  These I definitely do not want to have iron-poor blood, as I wish for their bodies to be hard like steel.  As for the rest, let them eat cake, tofu cake.  It keeps them docile.  

I now call Balthasar, a servant of the Montague household, who disobediently accompanied Romeo to Mantua without the permit of his Lord and Lady. 

Balthasar:  When I found Romeo in Mantua, he asked after his parents and Juliet, saying that nothing can be ill if she be well.  I sadly told him that her body slept in the Capulet’s vault, while her soul now lived with the angels.  Romeo asked me to hire post-horses (changing steeds every few miles like a pony express rider to go as fast as possible).  He said he’d defy Fate by going to Verona that night.  I beseeched him to wait, for his looks were pale and wild.  I feared a misadventure.  He sent me off to hire the horses, but I lingered a while outside his door.  Ominously, he swore aloud that he would lie with Juliet tonight. 

Alarmed, I followed him through the streets as he, real crazy-like, babbled to himself of an impoverished apothecary, who tended his pharmacy in tattered clothes worn o’er a meager body worn to the bones by sharp misery.  A man with a life as hopeless as the stuffed alligator and odd-shaped fishes hung on his wall, the man would, Lord Romeo surmised, be desperate enough to sell him a fast-acting poison, even though Mantua, fed up with its Princely family murdering each other with stomach-turning frequency, forbade such sale on pain of death.  Alas, as he sped up, I could not keep up with him, losing him in the maze of paths that passed for streets in that part of town.  I do not know whether he found the apothecary in due course. 

Prince Escalus:  As I understand that you witnessed Romeo’s fight with Count Paris, you shall linger in our dungeons a while longer so that you may be available for futher interrogation.  Take him away guards.  I now call Robert, son of Robert of the downy pillow, to the stand to tell us about his drug dealings with Lord Romeo.  Miserable wretch, you quake.  I see you fear your wrath.  Be not alarmed, old man, for I will harm you not if you tell the truth today.  After all, you are not Veronese and so owe me no fealty.  You are said to be an apothecary by profession, but apparently not a successful one, for you look too ill-fed not to have sold your father’s downy pillow years ago for gruel.  Tell us about Romeo.

Apothecary:  I was sleeping on my hard bed, my head upon a stone pillow, in the attic above my store when I heard someone yelling for me to come to the sole window.  By breaking the remaining shards, I was able to see below a spoiled rich kid, so confident of his own karma and so careless of mine, that from the street below he did shout that he was offering me forty ducats to sell him a quick-acting poison.  Naturally I explained, there being so many ears to hear, that Mantua’s law is death to anyone who sells such potions.  Insultingly, the beardless boy asked whether how anyone who lived so wretchedly should fear to die.  “Famine is in your cheeks,” he shouted.  “Your eyes speak of need and oppression,” he yelled. 

Prince Escalus:  Did you know the identity of the boy?

Apothecary:  No, although I may have heard the high-pitched voice before.  He sounded like he wore his tights too tight.  I wish now that I had thrown my chamber pot on his head, but I foolishly listened.  Cupping his hands to make a megaphone, the boy next shrieked that neither the world nor its laws were my friend; so why should I not break the law and cease to be poor?  For the ears of my nosy neighbors, I replied firmly that while my poverty might consent to break the law, I had not the will to do it. 

Then wordlessly I motioned him to the deserted lane behind my shop where I stealthily sold him a liquid capable, I said, of dispatching anyone, even he who had the strength of twenty men.  And this young lad had scarce the strength of a farm wife.  Though angered by the unnecessary attention he had drawn to our transaction, out of pity I sold him the poison, for his limp manner struck me as that of a Nancy boy tragically incapable of pleasing wife or kin by making his rod erect in the presence of women. 

Giving me the gold, he said it did more damage to men’s souls than the cordials I sold.  His final words confused me at first – that he would use the poison at a woman’s grave – but on reflection it made sense that his failure to consummate their marriage might kill them both with shame.  Stupid kid, thanks to him I was clamped in irons within the hour, and let out from a stinking hole only once, and that just so that I could testify here today.

Prince Escalus:  Thank you for your truthful testimony, apothecary; however, I liked not your aspersions on Romeo’s manhood.  My guards will escort you to Mantua, whose Duke has promised to make your execution especially painful to betoken his desire to improve relations between our two counties. 

I trust that you will get some pleasure amidst your pain by reflecting on your contribution to slowing the arms race in Northern Italy.  As a result of high-level discussions concerning Romeo’s stay in Mantua, we two counties have foresworn the first use of poisons, whether liquid or gaseous, in our wars against each other.  This is, I believe, a great step towards peace, since Verona already has clear superiority in crossbows, swords, spikes, spears and slingshots.

[The courtroom erupted with applause for the statecraft of Prince Escalus, who modestly took bows for an hour.  The apothecary was dragged from the room babbling something about “solids”.]

Prince Escalus:  I now call to the stand Friar John.  Tell us, friar, why Romeo did not receive the letters entrusted to you by Friar Laurence which advised Romeo that Juliet’s death was no more than a cheap voodoo trick, and that she would soon be walking around the tomb, not as a zombie but as a live, still-intact virgin, eager to mount Romeo, that is to say, to mount his horse and ride him until she conceived a babe in Mantua. 

Friar John:  Before I start, I blame the poor communication skills of Father Laurence.  He did no in timely fashion alert me to the importance of the letters he had handed to me to deliver to Romeo in Mantua.  As I told Father Laurence, I looked for a barefoot brother of our religious order to accompany me to Mantua.  I figured that I be more thankful to God for providing me with a donkey ride, which normally I detest since, being tall, my feet oft scrape along the ground, if I saw him trudging beside me barefooted on the rocky road. 

When I found him he was visiting the sick in a town seized by the Plague known as the Black Death.  Alas, we were both quarantined, sealed into that pestilence-ridden house as in a tomb, as the authorities waited for us either to die or to prove ourselves the one in ten who can beat the Plague. 

When I did not even sicken, I was declared a demon, but had wit enough to tell my foes that if they slew me that I’d return to demonically possess their bodies each in turn, making their heads spin like tops, their stomachs upchuck green bile, and their tongues talk profanities like a politician who thinks none can hear.  They fled from me.

Prince Escalus:  I had thought to punish you for agreeing to help Father Laurence in his conspiracy to help Romeo steal the rightful bride of my kinsman Paris, but on second thought I have no desire to discover how holy or unholy a friar you might be.  But do tell us before departing the stand, why you did not immediately head for Mantua upon your release.  Why did you return to Father Laurence in Verona, your mission incomplete? 

Friar John:  Your Excellency, I did not know that my mission was a matter of life and death for Romeo and Juliet, and so I decided that I should not risk taking the Black Death to Mantua. 

Prince Escalus:  But it was all right to risk bringing it here?  Friar, while I yearn not for demonic possession, nonetheless I cannot leave you unpunished for returning to this county as a potential Pestilence Mary.  I therefore banish you to Mantua, as it has not yet signed an agreement with Verona to ban germ warfare.  Guards, clothe him in several layers of rags stripped from our ignoble dead and escort him masked to the county line. 

The stupidity of the servant class is appalling.  It fatigues my mind to look for novel ways of punishing them.  Would that they might all be replaced by automatons, one to do the sweeping, another to do the washing, yet another to do the greeting.  If somehow we could put the spark of life into these infernal machines, we people of quality would never have a care again.

We might then give ourselves over entirely to the finer things in life – to sipping Pink Zinfandel and British cabernets, to quaffing a beer at the sign of Bud the Wiser, to writing rock n’ roll madrigals, to painting on black velvet, to penning haiku epics to our noble ancestors, to composing love poems to our nephews and nieces, and best of all, to cuckolding each other with wife, sons and daughters.  But alas, that utopia is nowhere yet to be found, even for those of quality. 

As I will need an extra hour in the morning to recover my wits after a night of drowning my sorrows in the cheap, effervescent swill newly conceived by the French monk known as Dom Perignon, this court does adjourn until 11 o’clock tomorrow.  I do so hope he’s right about the bubbles, but I suspect he’s simply made up a story to explain why he is unable to prevent the wine from fermenting in the bottle. 

End of Act 3 – Do come back after the third and final intermission to download the thrilling, mind-numbing conclusion to our comic drama, Act 4, “Is beauty found in opposites?”

Romeo and Juliet:  The Inquest, Act 4

By

Dawn DeWinter

Act 4 … Is beauty found in opposites?

Court Herald:   Oyez, Oyez, this Court of Inquiry for the Ninth Circuit Court of Assizes for the Region of Veneto, presided by Escalus, Prince of Verona, is resumed  for the purpose of absolving the Principality of any responsibility for the piteous suicide of star-crossed lovers Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet.  All rise while Our Noble, Inexhaustible Nepotist, Grand Panjandrum and Prince enters and takes his throne.

Prince Escalus:  I now recall the Montague servant Balthasar to the stand to tell us about Romeo’s actions at the Capulet’s vault.

Balthasar:  Your Lordship, when we reached the door of the tomb, Romeo asked me to give him a mattock and wrenching iron.

Prince Escalus:  What is a mattock?

Balthasar:  Beats me. I’ve never heard of it before neither.  But I gave him the crowbar and the pick, the one with an adze and chisel edge as ends of its head, which we brought with us from Verona.  Shall I proceed?  Then, giving me a letter for his father, he charged me to stand aloof, doing nothing, no matter what I should hear or see.  I was not to interrupt his descent into the bed of death so that he might behold his lady’s face and take from her finger a precious ring that he must use.  I knew not how.  He told me to get lost, warning me that I returned to pry he would tear me joint by joint and strew my bones about the churchyard.  If I went away as asked, however, I would leave as his friend to live a long, prosperous life. 

Of course, fearing his wild look and doubting his intentions, I hid myself behind a tombstone to witness what he did next.  I next overheard him say, as he pried open the tomb, that he intended to cram the maw of death – that be its stomach, Sire – with more food, by which I afeared he meant his own body.  It was at the very moment that Count Paris arrived at the tomb.

Prince Escalus:  How dare you insult the lords and ladies of this court by suggesting that we might not know the word “maw”?  I should have you sewn into a cow’s fourth stomach so that you might better know the meaning of the word, but that would take time and impede your testimony.  For the moment you are safe.  As I understand it, knave, you were the last to see my kinsman Paris alive?

Balthasar:  Yes, that, and the first to see him dead, if one doesn’t count Romeo.  Count Paris recognized Lord Romeo, and blaming him for the deaths of both Tybalt and Juliet, the latter from grief for her cousin, and fearing also that Romeo intended to commit some villainous shame to both bodies, sought to apprehend him.  The Count said, “Vile Montague, obey and go with me, for you must die.” 

Prince Escalus:  You speak well of my kinsman Paris.  ‘Tis true, he upheld the law, unlike those, yourself among them, who conspired with Romeo to evade his rightful banishment.   I tire of your testimony; wrap it up speedily.  

Balthasar:  Addressing Count Paris as “good gentle youth,” it was clear that Romeo, who admitted that he was a desperate man, was looking for a fight.  These were fighting words to a man his superior in rank and age, were they not.  And telling Count Paris to flee from the churchyard so that Romeo wouldn’t have to sin by killing him was the equivalent, wasn’t it, of breaking a beer bottle over a saloon tabletop?  Count Paris had no choice as a man of honor but to draw his sword.

Prince Escalus:  Be wary of your words, churl.  We all know here that the Count didn’t need someone making chicken sounds at him to do his duty by his dead fiancée and his county. 

Balthasar:  Disdaining Romeo’s permission to run away (a madman’s mercy my Lord Romeo did call it), Paris drew his sword to apprehend Romeo, whom he declared felon.  After a brief, but theatrical swordfight, Count Paris received a mortal blow; he begged Romeo to be merciful and to lay him with Juliet. 

Only after Paris died, did my Lord Romeo actually get a good look at the Count’s face; only then did he realize hat he’d slain Mercutio’s kinsman, who may well have married Juliet, given his final words and Mercutio’s advice that the girl would soon be a countess.  The last I saw of either Romeo or Count Paris, one man was carrying the other into the tomb.  In the darkness, I could not discern which bore which. 

I swear that I know nothing about the subsequent goings-on in the tomb, for I didn’t want to discover whether my Lord Romeo, whom I had always admire, was going to lie with both Juliet and Count Paris in an unholy threesome.  I may have more to relate tomorrow.

Prince Escalus:  I fear not, as I know you will not be in Verona tomorrow.  You have committed several crimes.  First, you arranged for Romeo’s fast horses in defiance of my decree of banishment.  Second, you helped him to desecrate a tomb.  Third, you stood by and allowed my kinsman Paris to be slaughtered, when an outcry might have panicked Romeo into fleeing from the churchyard.  I probably should order your death, but I feel benevolent today. 

Hence, I order you to take Romeo’s place in exile by departing this county as naked as you did enter it as a newborn babe, save for the brand of the thief that shall be burnt onto your forehead.  Did you not steal your owed allegiance from me?  When you have entered the territory of Mantua, you may cover your nakedness with whatever rags your traveling companion, Robert the Second and Last of the Downy Pillow, shall deign to offer you.  Guards, escort him naked to the apothecary’s cell and from there prod both of them to leave the county in haste. 

I now summon to testify Her Holiness, Sister Serena of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Sienna chapter.   

[A gasp of amazement overtook the assembled Lords and Ladies.  Those who did snicker, that is, those from the baser classes, were taken from the courtroom to be scourged for their insolence with a wet leather strap.   Nor were such folk readmitted while Susanna did testify.] 

Prince Escalus:  I would that Sister Serena’s privacy could be kept privy, but that is impossible on the circumstances.  As many in this courtroom have already grasped, Serena was born a male; indeed, as Delicatus the First, my older brother preceded me on the throne of Verona.  However, he took holy vows as a nun after being rendered more than a eunuch by the old Duke of Mantua as punishment for being captured in a battle in which he had commanded our forces while dressed as a pregnant Pope Joan.  God was with my brother, now my sister, that day for a spear, aimed at his protruding belly did no more than pierce his pillow. 

After becoming a religious, Serena joined the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence so that she might befriend and succor the poor, abandoned males who were being laid in Italy’s first hospital, Santa Maria of the Stairs in Siena.  It is, as a result, of the keen interest that Sister Serena has subsequently developed in medicine and its practitioners that she is able to enlighten us today about the last hours of Romeo and Juliet.  Blessed Sister, my brother, now sister, please commence by telling us how you came to be in the Capulet tomb the night the two teens died. 

Sister Serena:  Praise be to God!  Let us pray that he will grant wisdom to this tribunal, especially the wisdom to see that the Lord works in mysterious ways. 

[Amen and hallelujah the lords and ladies did say.]

Sister Serena: Our Lord, the Christ, also promised the resurrection of the dead on Judgment Day, did he not?

[The room remained silent, for all knew this to be a rhetorical question.]

Sister Serena:  We who have taken vows to serve God and Jesus Christ have an obligation to help Him – yes, singular, you heathen Unitarians and Gnostics – achieve the resurrection of the dead.  And that is why I am a resurrectionist, who liberates male bodies from their tombs so that they might have their day of judgment by the anatomist who toils for my hospital in Sienna. 

Prince Escalus:  Holy Sister, is that why you were in the Capulet tomb – to hasten the resurrection of a member of this noble family?

Sister Serena:  Precisely, dear brother.  I knew that Tybalt Capulet was a famous specimen of Veronese manhood, and so meant to resurrect him for final judgment by the hospital, provided that his fatal wound had not done excessive damage to the vital organs.  I was closely examining an external organ when his kinsmen entered the tomb with Lady Juliet’s remains. 

Forced to hide my presence, lest the family resent my intrusion on their moment of grief, I ended up being shut in the tomb when they locked it, with naught to keep me warm but a lantern.  As I dared not use up all the good air in the tomb, I ended up shivering in the dark for hours with nothing but Tybalt’s cold, naked body to keep me warm.  I would have died had not Romeo broken into the tomb, with Count Paris’s blood still dripping from his ghastly blade.  

Prince Escalus:  God surely looked after you, blessed Sister, by using Romeo as a tool to effect your deliverance from the house of death.

[“A house where the nun did go of his own free will,” shouted a low-bred, ashen-faced skeleton of a man sitting in the cheap seats.  “He’s a common grave robber and necro defiler!  Punish the villain, O Prince, as you would any other, even though he be twice a sister.”  The lout might have said more, but he was silenced forever by a quick sword thrust from Count Paris, intent on preserving decorum in the courtroom.]

Prince Escalus:  How crass, how uncivilized!  A male nun – that would be a sacrilege!  It is blasphemy even to suggest that there might be such a thing.  In refusing to acknowledge that Sister Serena has been lo these many years a woman cut, the churl showed himself to be a base racist.  I will not abide intolerance against the transgendered.  Let the bigot’s summary execution be a warning to all that I shall not abide any tumult from those sitting on the wrong side of the curtain tracks that do separate the people of quality in this courtroom from those who possess quantity alone. 

Sister Serena, please resume your testimony. We are most anxious to hear it all, now that we know full well that God Himself escorted you safely through the valley of Death. 

Sister Serena:  After Romeo finished lay Count Paris in the tomb, he turned his attention to Juliet.  He marveled that Death had no yet marred her beauty; she was not conquered, for her lips and cheeks were still crimson in color.  That should have clued him in that Juliet might be merely sleeping.  But Romeo, an impulsive youth who rarely stopped his ceaseless motion long enough to think, next turned to Tybalt’s nude corpse, which still looked enticing in the candlelight, and asked what favor he might do it. 

Briefly, liking not Romeo’s wild-eyed look, I feared that he might commit some outrage on an orifice of my poor, defenseless Tybalt, but Romeo, still preferring Juliet, turned back to her.  I knew now what his lust intended, for he said “unsubstantial death” had made her attractive and amorous.  “Amorous” – that was definitely the word that the pervert used. 

[The courtroom fell totally silent for the first time during the inquest, even the young hawkers of condoms and ointments ceasing to name their price.]

Prince Escalus:  Hesitate not, Sister Serena.  An inquest is, like the morgue, no place for modesty. 

Sister Serena:  Romeo was getting quite worked up.  He told his eyes to look their last, his arms to take their last embrace, and his lips to seal with a kiss his tryst with engrossing death.  I think “engrossing” was the word he used, but the word was distorted by his tongue’s being deep in the mouth of Juliet’s corpse, and “endearing” it might have been as well.  I fear what sin he might have committed next, had not his tongue awakened Juliet from her death-like slumber.

Prince Escalus:  Are you saying that Lady Juliet reawakened with Romeo still alive in the tomb beside her? 

Sister Serena:  Beside her?  He was on top of her, with his tongue inside her. 

Prince Escalus:  Then what is the truth of the rumor circulating around Verona to this day that Romeo, believing his wife dead, drank the poison provided him by the apothecary, and died after uttering at most a few words?  Similarly, what about the rumor that Juliet, upon waking to find her husband dead beside her, killed herself with his dagger? 

Sister Serena:  Neither tale is true as told in the streets, My Lord, as I should know being the sole witness to their demise.  Romeo was very much alive and lively when Juliet reawakened.  The falsehoods now making the rounds of Verona’s taverns were concocted, methinks, by the Capulet and Montague clans, to disguise the real flavor of their deaths.  God commands that the truth must out.

Prince Escalus:  How extraordinary that I, a Prince, did buy into the Big Lie.  I insist on the truth being told, no matter how it reflects on the much depleted Capulet and Montague families.  Fidelity to the memories of Mercutio and Count Paris demands as much. 

Sister Serena:  When Juliet awoke, she struggled for breath until her lord and husband stopped blocking her airway with his blood-hardened tongue.  Her first words were, “Here I am.  Oh, oh my, dear Romeo.”  She then kissed his lips, attempting to get a taste of his very essence.  Well, one thing led to another, and as a nun, I must leave him out the naughty bits.  Suffice it to say that Romeo and Juliet each stripped off his or her own clothes, taking advantage of the dark shadows cast by the single lantern to preserve their modesty until they stood naked before each other. 

I knew it to be the first time that they had ever seen each other thus, for they simultaneously gasped with despair.  “But you are a female,” Juliet said to Romeo, and he (I of all who persons cannot say “she” to describe a crossdressing female) gasped, “And you are a male.” 

Prince Escalus:  Let me get this straight (if that be possible in Verona) for the benefit of the scribe and all in attendance.  You are saying that Romeo was born a female, and Juliet, a male, and that both retained the sexual attributes that God bestowed on them at birth? 

Sister Serena:  Precisely, though both had clearly assumed the opposing gender.  Romeo did ask whether Juliet’s family or Count Paris knew her to be a transgender.  Juliet replied that they knew not, for no one but Nurse had ever seen her naked, and he had good reason to keep her secret. 

Prince Escalus:  Pardon the interruption, dear Sister, but you just used the masculine pronoun for Nurse, whom we all believe to be the woman who wet-nursed Juliet for thirteen years.  Did you misspeak perchance? 

Sister Serena:  Surely I did not.  Like Romeo, Nurse has long been a crossdressing male, in his case long before he midwifed Juliet’s birth.  Nurse saw that it was a boy, but assured everyone else, including Lady Capulet (who cared not to hold a baby stained with her fluids,) that it was a girl.  Before you ask, Nurse conceived this deceit because she regarded the baby as her own to raise, and wished it to grow up to be just like her – a man in skirts.  As for being Juliet’s wet nurse, that was easily achieved even for a man, for there are herbs that swell men’s breasts with milk to be drained by the babes they suckle.  I myself know that for a fact. 

Prince Escalus:  I fail to understand, given what you tell us, why Romeo and Juliet are dead.  If only one were a crossdresser, I can understand that the other, feeling trapped into love under an illusion, might use words so wounding that both of them, one from hurt, the other from having cause the hurt, could not bear to see another dawn.  But why did these two not run off together to a desert island, for they were both committed to eternal love between a man and woman, and did it really matter which was the man, and which the woman? 

Sister Serena:  There were no hurtful words, only tears of mutual remorse.  Both held that they could never love another person.  They had each found their one true love.  But they could not consummate their marriage.  They could never live together as man and woman in constant sexual embrace.  And why is that?  Because both were incapable of making love to the opposite sex. 

Prince Escalus:  Then you are saying that the widespread rumors of a sexual liaison between my kinsman Mercutio and Romeo are false?  If so, praise the Lord, not that there is anything wrong with being a homosexual and catamite.    

Sister Serena:  When Juliet, wondering after the gossip, queried him about Mercutio, Romeo replied that Mercutio, having playfully stripped Romeo of his tights while feigning to wrestle, did once see Romeo’s privy parts.  The shock was such that Mercutio never thought again of sex with Romeo.  In briefs, they no more than kissed, as siblings do.  However, they did spent countless nights together, but awake at a table, not asleep in a bed.  They did innumerable Tarot readings for each other, hoping against hope that the early deaths foretold by the cards could be reversed by a lucky shuffle.  Alas, it was not to be.  The cards always pointed to a dissembling girl as the ultimate cause of their untimely demise.  

Prince Escalus:  What fools those two youths were!  They should have consulted a tarot-reader in buskers’ alley, and then paid for the reading they wanted.  Were I them, I would have proceeded thus.  However, as Prince, I simply imprison those who dare to predict a future I do not want.  I am no longer at risk of a contrary reading.  Blessed Sister, you have not yet told us most certain why Romeo and Juliet slew themselves, though the wisest among us have surmised the precipitant cause.

Sister Serena:  You’re correct as usual, my brother.  Romeo used the poison he’d brought and Juliet a dagger he gave her after both decided that they were unable to live either apart or together.  Juliet offered that by dying together that they would become lovers for all eternity, for spirits and angels in heaven had no gender to impede a love as pure as theirs.  On earth, they could not abide the sight of each other’s form corporal; in heaven, there would be no flesh to prevent them from seeing and cherishing each other’s soul immortal.  I did weep as they offed themselves. 

As Romeo was clearly dead, I endeavored to keep Juliet alive by stripping off all her clothes so that I might use them to fill the knife wound; and when that failed, I tried to arouse her from her agony by giving her the breath of life at diverse places along her body.  For a long while I believed that she was coming round when the midpoint of her body responded ardently to my lips.  I’ll never know how much life force Juliet as yet retained, for I overheard a servant of Count Paris and the cemetery’s watchmen outside the tomb and so decided, albeit reluctantly, that discretion required me to steal away to a dark corner.  They soon discovered and reported to the world outside that the tomb had three new bodies. That is my report.

Prince Escalus:  It is probably a blessing, dear Sister, that you were unable to arouse Juliet from the abode of the spirits, for she did not care to live without her Romeo.  Sister, may God protect you as you return to Siena with the remains of Juliet, Paris and Tybalt for the Last Judgment by you and the anatomist at Sancta Maria of the Stairs.  The Capulets are to be commended, as should I, for our donatives to medical research.  We know that the three corpses, all males it seems, are in good hands when they are in your keeping, dear Sister.  We all bid you a thankful farewell. 

The last words at this inquest shall be mine, as is my personal custom and hereditary right.  First, in answer to Friar Laurence’s request to have his old life sacrificed upon the rigor of the severest law if I decided that the deaths of Romeo, Juliet, Mercutio, Tybalt, Paris, and Lady Montague, who died of grief after hearing of Romeo’s banishment, were in any way his fault.  I have not so decided, for Friar Laurence is a holy man. 

As for Bello Ragazzo, were he indeed more than the semblance of a man, I should probably punish him for not coming directly to the aid of Lord Paris during his swordfight with Romeo.  But what can one expect of a feeble woman?  Count Paris should have known better than to depend on a girl for his defense, no matter how good she looked in male hosiery.

[“I am not so feeble, Your Excellency.  I have strong muscles if you care to feel them.  And I was oft the stallion to my beloved Count’s mare.”  With such words a callow youth did dare to interrupt the summation by the Prince.]

Prince Escalus:  Bello Ragazzo (or should I call you Bella Ragazza?) dare you at this late hour to impugn the memory of my kinsman Paris by intimating that he was so tame that he would let a young girl ride him? I think not, though it might explain his passion for Lady Juliet; perhaps he suspected her true gender.  Yet even were I to accept that Count Paris was gay, as surely he must have been to have been bested in a duel by a crossdressing female named Romeo, how could you conceivably have performed the stallion’s role when you lack his major part?  Come to the stand to answer my questions, o handsome youth.

Bello Ragazzo:  My name is definitely Bello Ragazzo, My Lord Prince; never again will I female be in name or attire.  While, as a male, I have pleased many men as their filly, for those who prefer a more coltish lover, I have devised a polished wooden shaft, nine inches by two inches, which I attach most cleverly by leather straps to my waist.  It pleased the Count, my lord and mistress, for me to use it repeatedly like a sword, burying its shaft deep inside until he moaned like a woman.

Prince Escalus:  This device you have most cleverly invented, by what name do you call it?

Bello Ragazzo:  I call it a tampon, my lord, because it plugs a body cavity, albeit at intermittent intervals. 

Prince Escalus:  You are indeed a clever g … boy.  I have but two questions yet to pose.  First, did you have the foresight to consult with Father Laurence, our herbalist, in a timely fashion?  And second, am I to infer from your testimony that Count Paris was, to put it most delicately, a transvestite dyke?

Bello Ragazzo:  Your Excellency, distress yourself on neither account.  Count Paris was indeed a male at both his birth and death.  It pleased him, however, to be treated like a woman in bed by a woman dressed as a man.  That’s a common enough whimsy in Verona, is it not?