Author's notes

Special Thanks:

Extra special thanks to Cassandra, for telling me to "Steal from the classics," because "It was good enough for Shakespeare." I finally realize why so many writers re-vamp fairly tales, myths, and old plays. For one thing, you can be rather lazy because the overall plot is already outlined for you. For another, people who like a story will generally like to read a new perspective on it.

Thanks to Jaded for proof-reading. Any mistakes that are still in there are probably ones that she found but I forgot to correct. Thanks to Celtic for reviewing my outline.

Thanks to Marilyn for inspiring me to start writing again. Marilyn has done thirteen LotR stories, of which I've unfortunately only read about three, but just hearing her talk about the writing process gave me the bug. I didn't plan to write fan fic because it seemed like a silly kids' game, but Marilyn is my age with a more formal background in writing than I have, so I thought if she's doing it, I should at least try it.

Thanks to all my Clex friends on the message boards who encouraged me to write more. I don't think they knew what kind of monster they were unleashing by encouraging me. I don't think they knew I was going to use my powers for evil instead of good. Anyone who knows me in real life could have warned them!

Thanks to my parents for keeping a complete collection of Shakespeare's plays in the living room while I was growing up.

Thanks to the Muse of Parody who keeps visiting me at inopportune moments, like staff meetings.

And of course thanks to old Bill, who I hope is laughing at me somewhere.

History of the play:

The story "Romeo and Juliet" appeared in its modern form in 1530, as a novella by Luigi da Porto. The story of how the young lovers died was floating around before then, but he is the one who gave it the back story and motives and the names we know them by, and assigned them to historical families. Shakespeare wrote his "Romeo and Juliet" in 1591 or 92. He changed the names only slightly, but he pretty much reinvented all the characters.

According to the "Sparknotes" study guide (see " link below), many of the details in Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" were taken directly from the poem "Romeus and Juliet" by Arthur Brooks. However, this is the only reference I've been able to find so far on Arthur Brooks, so I can't tell you anything else about him. He's not in any of my books, and MSN and Google searches yielded nothing. Some day maybe I'll track down a primary source and tell you all about him, but from the Sparknotes comments, it doesn't sound like we're missing much.

Although Romeo and Juliet are fictional, the Montague and Capulet families were real feuding noble families. The story is set in Verona in the 1300s. It seems to be generally accepted that the tone of the feud in that time and place is historically accurate.

My experiences with and opinions of the play:

My first exposure to this story was actually the novel Sung in Shadow, by Tanith Lee. I bought it because of the pretty picture on the cover, not knowing anything about the story. My ideas about Lady Capulet and Mercutio are so heavily informed by that novel that I may not have any accurate idea of how Shakespeare meant to portray them.

I'm not sure how many productions I've seen. The only two I remember clearly are the one I saw at the Idaho Shakespeare Festival (I don't know what year) and the movie starring Leonardo di Caprio and Clare Danes.

In reading the play, as far as I was concerned, the story was over when Mercutio died, since his character has the most personality. Upon further reflection, I see that Mercutio's death, the first death in the play, is also the turning point that tells us that there is no way this story can end well. He's killed pointlessly, in a duel that he's fighting for what seems to be no good reason at all. It reminds us that the play is supposed to be a tragedy, not a romance. The story isn't about the great love between the two kids, it's about the fact that two innocent kids die because of their families' feuding.

Remember that. It makes the play much more interesting than if you try to watch it as a love story. (This is my own opinion. I do not have any authoritative sources to back it up other that Isaac Asimov's observation that the fact that Caplulet doesn't mind Romeo being at the ball indicates that the feud is dying out.)

Another note about Mercutio: I personally think that the text of the play shows he is in love with Romeo, which makes this an especially choice play for turning into slash. I also know that I'm not alone in my slashy interpretation, as I've seen it supported in other places. I don't know how widely accepted the idea is, but it's out there. That's not why I chose this play, though; my decision was entirely due to the first line of the prologue of the play: "Two houses, both alike in dignity."

My changes:

Twenty-first century Kansas is less similar to fourteenth-century Italy than one might think. Some adaptations were required.

I assign the lines where they make sense, so the assignments are a bit fluid. Pete plays both Tybalt and Juliet's nurse. Martha, whom I assigned as Lady Capulet, had to take over some lines of Paris's and Capulet's, and even part of Montague's role, and Lana also gets to play Paris. But in general ...

Lex – Rome
Clark – Juliet
Martha – Lady Capulet
Jonathon –Capulet
Lionel – Montague and Friar Laurence
Lana – Benvolio and Paris
Chloe – Mercutio
Pete – Tybalt and Nurse

As may be entirely obvious, Lex Luthor is Romeo Montague's polar opposite. (He's also about 200 times more intelligent that Romeo.) If anyone is like Romeo, it's Clark, but no way was I going to write Lex as Juliet. One might wonder, if I was going to set R&J in Smallville, why not use one of the girls as Juliet? Well, two reasons. First, the feuding family thing; it had to be Jonathon Kent versus Lionel Luthor. Nothing else made sense. Second, if it's not slash, where's the fun?

When the play begins, Romeo is smitten with this chick Rosaline. From his conversation with Benvolio, I get the impression that Romeo has a new True Love every week. That won't do at all for Lex; in the three years "Smallville" has been running, Lex has only had one real love interest. (I'm referring to Helen, not Clark.) He's not easily smitten at all.

Romeo and Juliet first meet at the feast at the Capluet's house. That wasn't working either, because Lex needed people to dialogue with, and his only other friends in Smallville are Lana and Chloe, whom he knows through Clark. If he didn't know Clark already, I'd have no one to play Benvolio and Mercutio.

Therefore, I have Lex already being in love with Clark at the beginning; otherwise the story wouldn't make sense, on either an emotional or chronological level.

Clark Kent resembles a 13-year-old girl only his mood swings. However, like Juliet Capulet, he is surrounded by people trying to poison his mind against all things Montague/Luthor.

In "Smallville," Clark begins by sticking up for Lex and asserting that all Luthors aren't evil as Lionel is. Gradually he's coming to think that Lex really is like Lionel. Juliet, on the other hand, begins by believing all Montagues are her enemies.

Juilet does have a streak of rebelliousness, seen when she makes a point of saying that she will obey her mother's wishes in marriage only out of duty and not because she wants to. However, Juliet would never stand up to her parents the way Clark stands up to his father, and Clark wouldn't be as snarky to his mother as Juliet is to hers.

My most major change from the "Smallville" canon, then, is that I have Clark buying into his father's antipathy for the Luthors from the beginning. It's out of character in a bad way, but it also makes a certain amount of sense, as Jonathon has hated Lionel since before Clark can remember, and with good reason. Unlike the head of the Montague house, Lionel Luthor is actually a villain, who blackmailed Jonathon about his adoption of Clark.

Another obvious question might be: why didn't I leave in the eloping bit and just change Mantua to Massachusetts? Too hokey. Lex and Clark wouldn't care about getting legally married, and even if they did, Clark is under age; Lex would be committing a felony by taking Clark over state lines, so they couldn't possibly apply for a license even if they wanted to.

Act by Act:

Acts I and II were a cinch. They practically wrote themselves. In fact, looking back at them, my feeling is "I wrote this? I don't remember writing this." I think I was possessed by a muse at the time.

Act III had to wait until I was struck with inspiration, which arrived in the form of a "fan war" on LiveJournal. Act III is dedicated to everyone who pissed me off during the war.

You probably noticed that Act IV is much lighter on the Shakespeare than the other acts. This was far and away the hardest one to write; the other acts were each done in one sitting of about an hour, but Act IV took me several days and four drafts. After the first draft, I realized I'd totally screwed up the logistics. After the second draft, I discovered I had not included any of Shakespeare's words at all, so I went back and crammed in as much as I could. The third draft still had logistics problems. Then it took me weeks to get it back from my beta reader because of an email problem.

There were three major obstacles in Act IV: First, how the hell do you kill or even incapacitate Clark Kent in the first place? Second, Romeo trusts Friar Laurence, but Clark Kent knows that Lionel Luthor is out to get him, so why would he do anything Lionel suggested? Third, most of the dialogue concerns Juliet's betrothal to Paris – completely out of place in twenty-first century Kansas. It's important to the play, because it's escaping the arranged marriage that motivates Juliet to drink poison, but the CoCK (Chamber of Clark Kent, which I have Lex refer to as the Meteor Room) provided plenty of motive for Clark. I represented arranged marriage with a subplot about Lana discovering feelings for Clark, but none of Paris's lines worked for her. All that subplot accomplished, really, was to keep Lana in the story long enough to get killed. I was already far behind Shakespeare in my body count; I couldn't skip over killing Paris!

In Act V of the play, Montague announces that his wife has died of grief, then he and Capulet decide to be friends and Montague says he will raise a statue of Juliet in pure gold. In Smallville, Lillian Luthor is already dead, so it had to be Jonathon, who had a weak heart in the canon anyway. Properly, Act V should have included Jonathon dropping dead and Lionel and Martha working out their differences, but that just couldn't happen. I had to move those events forward in time, so I made them an epilogue – which is really what they are in the play anyway, I think.

Weird scene numbering:

Shakespeare didn't actually number the scenes; I'm not sure he even separated them. I've generally followed the "traditional" scene numbering for the convenience of readers who feel like nit-picking me and comparing my story to the text of the play. Where you see scenes with half-numbers (2.5 in Act I, 1.5 in Act II, et cetera), that indicates that either my sources didn't agree on the scene numbering, or that I had to move the action for my own nefarious purposes.

Notes for Nit-pickers:

If you are a serious nit-picker, you can entertain yourself by naming all the other plays from which I borrowed! I'll give you the sonnet as a freebie: Lex's speech to Pete at the end of II.ii is Sonnet 124.

Sources:

History:

The Yale Shakespeare, edited by Wilbur L Cross and Tucker Brook
Published under the direction of the Department of English, Yale University
1993 by Barnes & Noble Books

Romeo and Juliet (SparkNotes)
Spark Publishing, January 2002

Inspiration:

Sung in Shadow by Tanith Lee
Published in 1983 by DAW Books, Inc

I read this 20 years ago, but I assume it influenced the way I read the play:

Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare : A Guide to Understanding and Enjoying the Works of Shakespeare, by Isaac Asimov
Gramercy; Reissue edition, September 2, 2003