Still Star-Crossed (39 page)

Most of the major characters from
Still Star-Crossed
either appear in
Romeo and Juliet
or are mentioned there. Benvolio appears throughout the first half of
Romeo and Juliet
, usually teasing Romeo about his infatuation with Rosaline. His very first line is “Part, fools! Put up your swords. You know not what you do,” but seven lines later he’s dueling Tybalt himself, which is a mixture of maturity and stab-happy impulsiveness that really inspired me as I wrote my version of his character. He disappears from the play after Mercutio’s death, but as far as the audience knows, he survives.

Prince Escalus appears throughout
Romeo and Juliet
, but aside from his increasingly short temper with the feuding Montagues and Capulets, we aren’t privy to a great deal about his inner emotional life. His relationship with Rosaline is entirely invented.

Friar Laurence, the nurse, Lord Montague, and Lord and Lady Capulet all appear in the play. Lady Capulet’s characterization is probably the most different in
Still Star-Crossed
—in the play, she’s kind of a piece of work, but not actually evil as far as we know.

Probably the greatest liberty I took was with the character of Paris. In
Romeo and Juliet
, Romeo kills him outside Juliet’s tomb, and he does not live on to become a secret villain.

Rosaline never appears onstage in
Romeo and Juliet
, but she is frequently mentioned in the first couple of acts, most often by Benvolio, who is sick of hearing the lovesick Romeo moan over her. We learn very little about her, except that she is Capulet’s niece, that she is beautiful, and that she steadily refuses Romeo’s ardent advances, preferring to “live chaste.” These three pieces of information went remarkably far in the creation of my grumpy, independent heroine.

This is a list of party guests that appears in act one, which I found useful when naming Capulet types.

As you can see, both Livia and the Duchess of Vitruvio appear on this list. I decided that Lord Capulet was the kind of guy who would refer to his noble mother-in-law not by her full title, but as “the widow,” probably to get on her nerves.

Penlet, Tuft, Lucullus, the gravedigger, and all the other Montagues and Capulets are my creations. Their names are mostly drawn from other plays or are made up, although my friend Graham Moore’s book
The Sherlockian
contains a character named Melinda who (spoiler alert) also dies a violent death, so I named Gramio after him in revenge.

Shakespeare superfans will have noted that I introduced a couple of small crossovers. The gravedigger alludes to a cousin in Denmark in the same profession—that’s a reference to
Hamlet
(the “Alas, poor Yorick” bit). Princess Isabella is my creation, but she’s married to Don Pedro of Arragon, who is a character from
Much Ado About Nothing
. She was going to be Hermione from
A Winter’s Tale
, but I woke up one day and remembered Hermione’s father was the emperor of Russia. I’m still annoyed about that.

This book would never have been written without the help and support of many wonderful people. My agent, Jennifer Joel at ICM, has been with the book from the very start, and I can never thank her enough for all her insight, faith, and patience. My editor, Michelle Poploff at Delacorte Press, also made this book a hundred times better.

Every day I worked on
Still Star-Crossed
, I referenced an electronic copy of the complete works of Shakespeare compiled by Project Gutenberg, which was an endlessly useful tool.

I’d like to thank all the other friends who have helped me through this process. The Upright Citizens Brigade taught me to write and helped me get paid to do it. UCB and all my friends there mean the world to me. For three months, Avi Karnani, Matt Wallaert, and their company Churnless gave me a desk in their office to write. It was one of the greatest creative windfalls I’ve ever gotten. I will also always be grateful to Graham Moore; Will Hines; Charlie Baily; Ayesha Choudhury; Nick Sansone; Terry Figel; Marysue Foster;
Patty Riley; my parents, Bart and Barbara Taub; my sister Hannah Taub; my brother, Nathan Taub; all the other friends who put up with me muttering in iambic pentameter; and most especially, my sister Amanda Taub, without whom this book would not exist.

Finally, I would like to thank William Shakespeare, for Cordelia, for the forest of Arden, for “exit, pursued by bear,” and above all for the surpassing beauty of
Romeo and Juliet
.

Melinda Taub got a Trapper Keeper for her seventh birthday and sat right down and wrote her first story in it. The Trapper Keeper is long gone, but the writing never stopped. Her work has appeared on FUSE TV’s
Billy on the Street
, on the Onion News Network, and at the Upright Citizens Brigade. Her Internet videos have been viewed by more people than the population of Fiji.

Melinda lives in New York City. She likes biking, running, eating Peking duck, and seeing every Shakespeare production she can.