Romeo & Juliet's 'Papa Cap' Prep,
Part 2: The Long Emotional Slog

What-ho and welcome to this egregious baccchanall of a segment of the audio folio known as the Electric Secrets variety podcast. For those who had act, direct and design the works of the bard, and for his many lovers and admirers. This is Rustic Shakespeare.

Welcome back, everybody. I'm so sorry I made you wait so long for Part Two of our Papa Cap prep. But hey, here we are. And I like to call this the long emotional slog to the end of Romeo and Juliet. Remember, if you are unfamiliar with the play or just would like a reference, just hop on over to the Folger Shakespeare Library. They have the best synopses and the best study materials for the Shakespeare plays. And that's Folger.edu.

So if you remember where we left off, I have arranged my daughter's marriage to Paris, and I have told my wife to acquaint her with this and prepare her for the wedding. So Lord Capulet has gone off to bed and the next time we will see him is when Mom has told Juliet about the wedding and Juliet is refusing to marry Paris.

And she says, Well, here comes your father, tell him. And as you can imagine, things get really emotional. So let's do it already. 

Act three, scene five. 

So this scene is Papa Cap's big moment. And this is the trap that you can fall into when you're playing Lord Capulet. There's something about Shakespeare tirades that, especially with the male characters, that tend to bring out a little too much testosterone in the actor. The actor thinks, “oh I can just yell all of this at Juliet and it will be effective.” But I caution you against that.

Otherwise, it will end up just you screaming. 

Obviously, this is an emotional speech that Lord Capulet is giving Juliet for refusing to marry Paris. And what's interesting about it, and what I found in rehearsal, is that it doesn't have to be strictly directed towards just Juliet. Remember, Lady Capulet is there, and the nurse is there. So I can add a little variety as Lord Capulet by focusing on not just Juliet, but certain parts on my wife and certain parts on the nurse.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go through my big emotional speech, and I'm just going to tell you who I directed that to in final performance and why I chose to direct those particular lines to that particular character. Since we were doing this in a modern setting, I decided to add a little something to Papa Cap's character since he is so erratic and so quick to temper. I thought, what if I tried something with some medication in rehearsal? I just brought a pill bottle with me and we put some tic-tacs in it and I sort of come in because I have this weird sort of poetic speech where I come in and I say,: “When the sun sets, the earth doth drizzle do, but for the sunset of my brother's son, Tibilt, we just buried him, right? It rains downright. How now a conduit girl, what still in tears evermore showering in one little body thou counterfeits a bark, a sea, a wind, for still thy eyes, which I may call the sea, do ebb and flow with tears, the bark thy body is, sailing in this salt flood, the winds thy size.”

It's bad poetry. It's like he's waxing poetic to try to comfort his daughter, who at this point is more angry than she is sad, but he doesn't notice that, at least in the way I was playing it, because he's been drinking all day. He just buried his nephew, and he's gone to bed, and I thought, what if he can't sleep? And on top of all this alcohol, he's taken some sleeping pills. So now, that sort of adds to his erratic personality and may be a cause for waxing bad poetry when he walks in. 

So moving forward in the scene, Lady Capulet tells him that Juliet's not going to marry Paris. And then Capulet's trying to figure things out. 

“Soft, take me with you, take me with you, wife. How will she none? None of Paris. Does she not give us thanks? Is she not proud? Does she not count her blessed, unworthy as she is?”

Little digs Juliet.

“That that we have wrought so worthy a gentleman to be her Lord.”

And if you look at the original script, it probably says bride and not lord, we changed it to “Lord”

just for a modern audience, because, obviously, it means bridegroom talking about Paris. But we thought it might be a little confusing. So with the director's permission, I asked her,

Why don't we change it to Lord instead of bride? 

Now Juliet comes forward and tries to explain herself to me. But, obviously, I'm in this funk, and I'm kind of hearing what she's saying and getting angrier and angrier. And now starts the tirade. 

“Shoptologic, what is this proud? And I thank you and I thank you not, and yet not proud mistress minion you.”

All of this can be directed to Juliet. But I thought, what if I directed some of this to my wife? So when I say “mistress, minion you,” I delivered that to my wife and not to Juliet. I turned back to Juliet for thank “me no thankings, nor proud me no prouds, but fettle your fine joints against Thursday next to go with Paris to St. Peter's church, or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither out to you green sickness carry an out to baggage you taloface.” 

So that's all directed toward Juliet and a building rage that I have to control because it's got to go somewhere. Remember, this is poetry, and poetry is related to music. So I can't leave it all on the stage right away. I have to make sure I have a place to go with my rage. So I delivered all that to Juliet. 

Juliet kneels. “ Good father, I beseech you on my knees, hear me with patience, but to speak a word.”

And then I tell Juliet, “Hang thee young baggage, disobedient wretch. I tell thee what get to the church of Thursday or never after look me in the face. Speak not, reply not, do not answer me. And this is the point where the fingers, the fingers itch line, is where I'm making as if I'm going to hit her. And I played the fingers itch line off as, oh, I, I'm sort of shaking my hand. I say my fingers itch. And it's, I'm making this excuse thinking that it's going to be enough. But it's obvious that I almost, that I made a fist like I was going to hit her. Now I'm done with Juliet for the time being. Then the next bit is obviously directed toward my wife because I say, “Wife, we scarce thought us blessed that God had lent us but this only child. But now I see this one is one too much and that we have a curse and having her out on her hilding.”

So I'm going back and forth between Lady Capulet and Juliet. Then the nurse pipes in, and now obviously I have to address the nurse. Then we come to a point “God's bread it makes me ma,” when he's got all these voices in his ear. He's got Juliet, his wife, and the nurse. The testosterone kicks in, and Capulet just goes ballistic. 

He's got too many female voices in his ear. So now is the point where I'm directing different things, not to Juliet, but to Lady Capulet and the nurse, because remember I told them to prepare Juliet, and now she has refused to marry Paris. 

So, to me, to my character in that moment, it is as much their fault as it is Juliet's fault. So I say, “God's bread it makes me mad. Day, night, hour, tide, time, work, play alone in company. Still, my care have been to have her matched. I deliver all that to my wife. Still at my wife, “And now having provided a gentleman of noble parentage, and then to have a wretched peeling fool,” maybe over my shoulder toward Juliet, “a whining mamat in her fortunes tender to answer I'll not wed. I cannot love. I am too young. I pray you pardon me.” 

I found something with that particular line. “I am too young. I pray you pardon me.”

I really made this specifically toward my wife because I thought maybe this was our situation. Maybe I had asked her to marry me, and she had made the same excuse. I'm too young. I pray you pardon me. Maybe that's recalling the scene of me proposing to her for the first time, and reminding her of what she said to me, and that we are now husband and wife. 

Then I go on to say, “But and you will not wed.”

So this is to Juliet. “I'll pardon you.” 

Now this next line. “Graze where you will, you shall not house with me.” I delivered that to the nurse because again, it's the nurse's fault as well. She's sticking up for Juliet, and when the father is mad at someone, and somebody else sticks up for the person he's mad at, then they are now an accomplice. So he says, “Graze where you will, the obvious allusion to a cow or a farm animal. “Graze where you will, you shall not house with me. Look to it. Think on it.” 

So he's threatening to fire her to throw her out on the street. Says, “I do not use to jest.” Now I'm back to Juliet. I'm telling her “Thursday is near, lay hand on heart advise,” and we added a moment where she refuses nonverbally, and I grab her by the shoulders, and I deliver the next bit to her standing behind her with my hands on her shoulders as she's struggling. “Thursday is near lay hand on heart advise, and you be mine. I'll give you to my friend and you be not hang bag, starve, die in the streets for by my soul. I'll narrow acknowledge the nor what is mine. She'll never do the good.” 

I use this part to bring in a lot of the emotion of being a father. So again, dynamics, it can't always be about rage. So I got out of the rage a little bit to sort of let the audience know that, you know, that time-honored age-old maxim of parenthood. This hurts me more than it hurts you. You know, it hurts me to say this. It hurts me to hurt you like this. So then I finished the speech. 

I remind the nurse and my wife. “So trust to it,” I deliver to the nurse, “be think you I delivered to my wife. And then I'm storming out. “I'll not be for sworn.” 

And then we added something at the end of that as a button. I always thought the scariest times when somebody was mad in my family were when I could hear them, but I couldn't see them. We had a crash box off stage. So when I delivered that last line, I punched the crash box. So the audience could hear my rage, but not see me. 

So what I just took you through was an exercise in the dynamics of character. And the lesson is to not fall back on the obvious performance. I'm in a rage. I'm angry. I'm just going to yell everything at Juliet. 

Explore different things, explore different possibilities. And you can find something that's different and unique to your performance and this particular production. So never take the easy road. Explore. You will find something exciting. I guarantee it. 

We hope you're enjoying Rustic Shakespeare. If you are so moved, strike quickly and subscribe for more insightful segments, festive extras, and a bold selection of bonus material. Have a bard-related inquiry for Scott to address. Or a topic suggesting you'd like opined on the next segment. Well, we hope you'll go once more onto the breach and drop us an email info@monstervoxproductions.com. 

The emotion does not end. 

Act four, Scene one.

Fryer Lawrence convinces Juliet to tell her family that she'll marry Paris, and then he brings in the whole drinking of the dram that will make it seem like she's dead. And then we'll put her in the tomb and then she can be spirited off to join Romeo in Mantua, right? So …

Act four, scene two.

The scene that follows is where she agrees to marry Paris. She kneels before me and begs my forgiveness, and I brought in the father thing where I'm not even looking at her. I'm making her work. Showing her that I'm not going to look her in the eye until I've been satisfied that she's repentant. Then she surprises me. And that's the dynamic of the scene. She has spoken to Paris, and this happens in Fryer Lawrence's cell. So she brings up that she's already spoken with Paris. And this is just one of those moments where Shakespeare is so in tune with how human beings behave, especially teenagers. She doesn't want to marry Paris. She's kind of disgusted by him. But she will use that to show her father that she's repentant. She'll say that she's talked with Paris and that they've exchanged tokens of love or whatever it was, just to make me see that she's repentant. 

So then I go back into “Papa Cap” mode. I'm telling my servants to go tell Paris this and that. And I make sure I remind my wife, Hey, look, I fixed things. You didn't fix things. You didn't do your job. I did my job on my way out. Nice short, little uncomfortable, awkward scene. 

Then we find Juliet, quote unquote, dead in in Papa Cap's next scene.

Act four, scene four.

This is another place where you can fall into a trap. We think Juliet's dead, and it's all about

death, death, death. My child is dead, and Paris is grieving and it's almost like we're trying to

outdo each other in terms of our mourning. And there is that it's kind of a look at me. Look at me. Look how sad I am. But that can actually hamstring you because you should give the scene its due in terms of the heightened emotions of the character. 

Those should be honest, at least in exploration in rehearsal. If you want to look at the scene as the parents sort of posturing in their grief and Lady Cap and Lord Cap, and the nurse trying to outdo each other in how loudly and grandly they are mourning, then you do a disservice to the scene. So, I wanted to play things as straight as I could. But again, this is something that I've never experienced and is unique to this play. All of these circumstances playing into this finding my daughter dead after arranging a marriage, after burying my nephew for fighting with a member of the family that I hate. And I'm going to be punished for it if I fight this family anymore. All of this context is weighing on this scene.

So I thought the thing that's from my training that I took from a production that I did in grad school of the Greek tragedy Medea, where she kills her children to get back at her husband Jason, Jason of the Argonauts fame. And I was playing Jason. And the servants of Medea did this thing called keening, which is something that women in different cultures do when someone has died. They just make noises of mourning so that they can bring themselves to this cathartic experience of actually crying and getting all of this stuff out. 

So when I was delivering my lines, I was trying to use that idea of keening and making the text sound mournful until I could get myself to the point of crying by the very end of that scene, because there is this disbelief. I can't believe this is happening. He even has a line where he says, uh, “death that obtain her hence to make me wail ties up my tongue and will not let me speak.” 

So it's almost like he's describing what's happening to him. He's not crying yet, but he needs to get there by the end of the scene when he's almost howling. A lack, “my child is dead, and with my child, my joys are buried.” 

So I used that idea of keening, adding mournful tonality to the text to bring me to that place. And it's, it was difficult. I didn't get there really until tech week. So I had to be patient with the process and commit to that idea. 

So let me show you how I did that. I'm going to try not to blow the microphone out. So you'll hear me sort of in the corner of my studio here going through this mournful tonality with capulets lines just so you can hear what that sounds like. 

“Oh, son, the night before thy wedding day hath death lain with thy wife. There she lies. Flower as she was defloured by him. Death is my son-in-law. Death is my heir. My daughter he has wedded. I will die and leave him all life living. All is deaths. Oh child. Oh child. My soul and not my child dead at thou. A lack, my child is dead, and with my child, my joys are buried. 

Now, as melodramatic as that sounds, you have to commit to it. I haven't done that scene in a while, but by the time I'd gotten to tech week, my imagination was working for me because I had

committed to that tonality, and I was weeping by the end of the scene.

Okay, the final Lord-calculate scene. 

Act 5, scene 3. 

After all he has been through and done, the guilt, the rage, the mourning, now he finds his daughter in the tomb with Romeo dead beside her, and she's bleeding. And I hardly have anything to say about it. I have to be a listener, which is one of the hardest things to do because you feel like you need to be performing.

So I have to listen as Friar Lawrence recounts everything of how he married Romeo and Juliet in secret and the whole mixing up of the letters that he was going to tell Romeo about the dram Juliet was taking and to not worry that they would be reunited, you know, all of that stuff. And everything goes wrong, and Romeo and Juliet end up both committing suicide in the tomb.

So, I have to listen to this and find those points where it really hits me. The story is so sensational and ridiculous. And at this point, Lord Capulet is this close to being a broken man. He could have broken in the previous scene, but he can't because he's got another scene. You can't be a character that's completely broken and not fighting against something. So here he's really got something to fight against this outlandish, ridiculous story of what Friar Lawrence did to try to solve this problem between the two warring families. So that was a challenge in itself. Just listening to Friar Lawrence recount all of this stuff and reacting in the moment to what he's saying. 

And then, Capulet breaks. Romeo's servant, his confidante, in this case, we put Benvolio in that role, his best friend, instead of just an ordinary servant, has a letter that confirms everything. The prince is there, and he reads the letter, and everything the Friar says is confirmed. 

All of this has come to fruition because our families are fighting. It's such a human thing that reconciliation happens only when you've broken, when you are completely wasted as a human being. 

And that's what Capulet does. He's completely broken and finally makes up with Montague and makes peace with Montague in theory, right? We can think, well, they probably still hate each other, but there is that moment where Montague says he'll make a statue of Juliet and that Capulet's going to do the same thing, which is kind of a rich person thing to do between the two of them. And they have that moment at the end where they are, quote, unquote, reconciled. But that cracking of Capulet's soul doesn't happen in the previous scene. It happens when he has a few lines, but he has to listen. And the listening is what breaks him. 

So it's a discipline that the actor has to have, especially in Shakespeare, to listen to what's happening on stage, especially when you don't talk for a long, long time. And you keep yourself in the scene by listening and reacting. 

And hey, thank you so much for listening. And I hope you react by checking out the other segments in the Electric Secrets variety podcast. The companion segment to Rustic Shakespeare is Dedicated to the Craft, where I talk about acting technique. And there is also a brand new segment called Struck to the Soul, where I talk  bout creative life and the random things that happen in your life that you can use as a foundation for your creativity. 

Thank you again so much for listening. I am Scott. I will see you next time. May good fortune guide thee, and farewell.

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