Romeo & Juliet's 'Papa Cap' Prep,
Part 1: The Erratic Dad

What ho, and welcome to this egregious bacchanal of a segment of the audio folio known as the Electric Secrets variety podcast. For those who act, direct, and design the works of the Bard, and for his many lovers and admirers, this is Rustic Shakespeare, for the which supply, admit this fine pistol of a host, Scott de Leon Smith, Hey Nonny. 

Hey Nonny indeed. Good morrow cousins. 

We are all cousins, did you know that? Genetically speaking, but that's not what I'm here to talk about. I'm here to talk about the very special exhaustion that you get from preparing a Shakespearean tragedy. I've been working on the role of Lord Capulet, and I'm here to share with you some of my preparation, my insights, and some of what's been happening in the rehearsal process. 

So, remember, if you are not familiar with the play, I highly recommend using the Folger Shakespeare Library online as a reference. Plenty of great play and scene synopses and character analysis that you can use as a reference so you can better understand what I'm talking about. 

Let's to it already. 

So we're returning to Romeo and Juliet and Juliet's father, Lord Capulet. I want to start with the first scene that involves marrying Juliet off to County Paris. Act 1, scene 2. 

Now this scene has myself, Paris, and the prince. That's an interesting addition to the scene because I've seen the play done and been part of the play when the prince is cut from this scene and his one line is given to Paris. But in this particular production, the prince is still part of the scene. So, we're finishing a conversation about the brawl that took place in the first scene and that if we start brawling again, the Capulets and the Montagues, the prince is going to come down hard and he says, our lives will pay the forfeit of the peace. 

Is he serious? We don't know. But that is a choice for the actors in the scene. 

In this subsequent scene, Capulet assures the prince that he and Lord Montague can keep the peace. And then out of nowhere, County Paris asks about his suit to marry Juliet. So, we can deduce that this is something that the county has brought up before with Lord Capulet. And a very interesting thing happens. Lord Capulet tells Paris that his daughter is too young to marry. She's only 14 years old. And to wait two more years before pursuing her as his bride. And remember, this play was written over 400 years ago. So, the whole idea of young women getting married at 14 and their marriages being arranged by their father is part of the culture. It's just something you have to deal with when you're doing a play like this. 

So, County Paris pleads his case with this very bizarre argument that younger brides than Juliet are happy mothers made. And Capulet counters with the line, and too soon marred are those so early made. So, we have two males here talking about young brides becoming mothers. Again, the patriarchy at play. And another example of the things you have to deal with when you're doing an Elizabethan tragedy. 

But what happens next is very interesting because Capulet seems to deny Paris the right to pursue Juliet as his bride. And then all of a sudden he does a 180. He says, but woo her, gentle Paris, get her heart. My will to her consent is but a part. So, he changes his mind. Now there are a lot of different ways you can play this. You can play it in an exasperate type of way that Lord Capulet is kind of unpacking his opinion to Paris. He knows Paris is going to pursue Juliet no matter what he says. So, he's sort of unpacking his soul that his daughter's too young to get married. Then he gets all of that out and allows Paris, gives permission to Paris to woo his daughter. 

But something came up in rehearsal that really interested me because the prince is there. And I was thinking, what possible reason could the prince be there other than to kind of shore up and bring closure to this idea that Capulet is going to agree to keep the peace? What beyond that would justify the prince being part of that scene? 

And my job as an actor is to figure out why does Capulet change his mind so quickly? And I had this idea that I shared with the director that maybe this is some political pressure that the prince is putting on Capulet. Almost as if to say, you know, things might go a little better for you if you let Paris woo your daughter because County Paris and the prince are related. They are part of the Aeschylus family. So, it's something worth exploring that this might be, in the moment, a chance for Capulet to gain an advantage over Montague by ingratiating himself to the Aeschylus family by allowing Paris to at least pursue his daughter as a potential bride. 

So, what I suggested while we were rehearsing was that maybe the prince could give me kind of a non-verbal, a little look or a gesture to say, maybe you should let my kinsman pursue your daughter without words. And the actor playing the prince tried it in a rehearsal and the director liked it. It seemed to work. And it reminds me of a philosophy that my mentor taught us in grad school, is that you have to figure out a way for your characters to suffer the play, to bring more pressure on your characters, especially in Shakespeare because the stakes are so high, to not take the easy way out, to try things that are going to put more pressure on your character and bring more complexity to the scene. So, I think that's what this particular idea, this particular choice did. 

Eventually, Capulet is going to arrange that marriage between Paris and Juliet and she is already going to be married secretly to Romeo. So, bringing the prince in and making him kind of culpable with it adds a compelling complexity. And you are completely justified in doing that as collaborators because that is why these plays are still performed 400 years later, is that you can take an angle and you have your own unique personality that you add to the scene along with those interesting, compelling choices. So that brings a freshness to the play and it brings a newness to the performance that hopefully will surprise the audience and keep their interest. 

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The next scene with Lord Capulet is the famous party scene where Romeo first meets Juliet. 

Act 1, scene 5. 

And there is a new challenge in playing Lord Capulet because his dialogue, his verse is filled with interruptions and he's interrupting himself. He's giving orders to his servants. He's telling them to bring more light into the room and to quench the fire because the room is too hot and to turn the tables up. And he's doing this while he's trying to get people to dance. 

Now when we originally started rehearsing this, if you remember from the previous episode, I talked about how Capulet is nearly always played as a drinker. It makes sense, but in this particular scene, I don't want to be slovenly drunk because of these lines where I'm going back and forth and interrupting myself. So, I try to incorporate the physical sensation of having a buzz and not stumbling around and not slurring my speech, but using what the Stanislavski system calls sense memory, where I'm remembering what it's like to be drunk. And we used to do an exercise with this in grad school where we sat around in a circle and imagined that we had an alcoholic drink in front of us, a shot or a beer or something, and we would pick it up and we would imagine all the details of the taste of the liquor and how it felt going down our throats and things like that so that when we needed to, we could recall that sensation of being drunk and allow, or being slightly drunk, I guess, to whatever degree we needed it and allow that to sort of color our language and our physicality. 

Now the fun part of this scene is the exchange with Tybalt. So, Tybalt overhears Romeo when he's talking about Juliet and decides that he's going to kill him. So, he sends off a servant to get his sword and Lord Capulet hears this and we staged it in a way where I stop the servant and I confront Tybalt and we talk about Romeo. And it's really interesting because we mentioned Romeo and Capulet talks about how he's a virtuous and well-governed youth. So, he kind of likes Romeo, or at least likes his reputation, even though he is the son of his greatest enemy. So that's something you have to consider when you're playing Lord Capulet. 

Does he really admire Romeo or is he just talking nicely about him because Lord Paris is at the party, and he is wooing Juliet? So, when we stage this, County Paris and Juliet are talking quite close by. So, I kind of refer to them as I'm talking to Tybalt because there is that added pressure. So, it's one of those things I had to answer for myself as an actor. Am I really okay with Romeo being here because the town talks of him to be virtuous or am I just using him as an example to Tybalt because I do have a line where Capulet says, “Verona brags of him to be a virtuous and well-governed youth.” And if we remember Tybalt, Tybalt is not well-governed. He's a hothead. He's a lot like Capulet. So again, we have to make specific decisions. 

The whole idea of Capulet praising Romeo for having a good reputation is gone after this scene. It doesn't come back up until the very, very, very end where he promises to make a tribute to Romeo after they find he and Juliet dead in the tomb. He makes a promise to Montague because Montague says he's going to build a statue of Juliet in pure gold. So, Capulet decides to match that gesture by making a tribute to Romeo. So even though a moment might pass very quickly in a Shakespeare play, it's worth exploring because you might find something very useful. 

And there was also an opportunity to add some fun into Capulet. We don't want our characters to be all one thing. And yes, we can play Capulet as an angry drunk, but he can also have some humorous moments. And what I did when I was having this exchange with Tybalt is one rehearsal. He has this line, “go to, go to, you are a saucy boy.” So go to, go to means to do something. Go do this thing. So, I started dancing to try and get Tybalt to start dancing so that everybody else at the party would dance. And I say go to, go to, you are a saucy boy while I'm doing this silly little dance. And Tybalt's having none of it. And the people are noticing and it's kind of an embarrassing moment for Capulet. And the director liked that choice, and she thought everyone at the party should have a very specific reaction to it, almost like, I think she mentioned, like what if your boss was at a Christmas party and did something really embarrassing and you went through this whole process of do I laugh? Should I laugh? He's my boss. Or is he having a good enough time where he can laugh it off as well? So that turned into a really interesting moment for Capulet and for the party and in setting up the turn that Capulet's going to take later in the play. 

It sort of makes the audience kind of like him a little bit so that when he turns on Juliet later in the play, it has a much more powerful effect on the audience. 

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After the party scene, after Capulet has kind of talked Tybalt out of killing Romeo at the party and embarrassing the Capulets in front of County Paris, who's trying to marry Juliet, you don't see Lord Capulet for a long time until the pivotal moment of the play, 

Act 3, Scene 1, when Tybalt gets so angry with Romeo's friend Mercutio that they have a duel and Mercutio is killed, which spurs Romeo into a mad rage and he kills Tybalt and has to leave Verona. And of course, all of this happens after Friar Lawrence has secretly married Juliet to Romeo. 

Now after those two deaths occur, Lord Capulet appears and he doesn't have much to say. And I have to play that. I have to not stand there and just be a body in space. I have to be actively involved in the scene. So, I have to listen as Benvolio recounts the story of the duel and the fight and the prince is there and I have to be distrusting of Benvolio's story and I have to be enraged that the prince is even getting the story from Benvolio. And I have to feel some guilt because what I did at the party scene didn't seem to work. Tybalt still went after Romeo, according to Benvolio at least. 

So just because your character has no lines does not mean that they are not part of the scene. So listening is key and listening to all of the other lines as if you are hearing them for the first time. And that is a discipline in itself that I will talk about in future episodes. 

Now at this point in this particular production, this is where we put the intermission. So that pivotal moment happens, Mercutio and Tybalt are dead, Romeo is banished by the prince, we go into intermission, we take the bodies off the stage, and then we come back from intermission into the two weeping and wailing scenes, Juliet and the nurse. 

Act three, scene two. 

And Romeo and Friar Lawrence.

Act three, scene three. 

Tybalt wailing over what has happened. Two of the most challenging scenes in the play because they are setting up what is a gigantic, tragic slog to the end. It could be a slog if you don't do it right and if you don't do it in a compelling way. So, we have these two weeping and wailing scenes and Lord Capulet returns with Lady Capulet in a scene with Paris and this is the scene where he sets up the marriage between County Paris and Juliet. 

Act three, scene four.

Which makes things even more desperate for Juliet. What's interesting about this scene is it's the worst timing ever. We've just buried Tybalt. I've just buried my nephew and County Paris is there asking about Juliet and if he can see her and sometimes you wonder how stupid is this guy? But you also have to remember that he is part of the ruling family of Verona. He can do whatever he wants, basically. It doesn't matter the timing. He's probably very spoiled. But I can't pay attention to that because, if you remember from that previous scene with the prince, I am trying to placate Paris as much as possible. 

So, we talked about this in rehearsal, how much of this is Capulet being exhausted. He tells Paris that they haven't had time to talk to Juliet about his suit. It's very late at night. He's not going to tell Juliet to come down and talk to him. And Paris kind of gets it. He's going to take his leave. But then Capulet changes his mind immediately. Again, he does a 180 and tells Paris, “I'll make a desperate tender to my daughter. I think she'll be ruled by me.” And then all of a sudden I'm telling my wife to go to Juliet and acquaint her of Paris's love. I use the word son, acquaint her here of my son Paris's love. And the director and I talked about how much of this is just him getting Paris out of his house. How powerful is that, that he is so desperate and so trying to be in control of the situation that he will basically give his daughter to Paris, promise his daughter to Paris, just to get him out of the house? So, it really is an interesting dynamic of Capulet's character. 

And for a modern audience, it's going to, let's just say he's not going to make a lot of fans with a modern audience by, again, treating his daughter like a piece of property. And again, Capulet probably feels a lot of guilt over Tybalt's death. He's trying to fix things, but he's exhausted. So I have to allow those things to play in my mind and in my physicality as I'm rehearsing the scene. So a lot of exhaustive preparation for a role like this. 

All right, everyone, thank you so much for listening. I'm Scott. In the next episode, we are going to take a look at some of the most difficult of Capulet's scenes, the last three scenes in Romeo and Juliet. That great, giant, tragic slog to the end, but I promise you I'm going to make the slog as interesting and fun as possible. 

Until then, good fortune guide thee and farewell.