© 2021 G.N. Jacobs
Many writers talk about the critical voice in the heads and then say something along the lines of “shout that little bastard down and keep writing.” When the message naturally leads to an excuse not to write, I agree. Sometimes, the little guy has real things to say and maybe we should listen. Maybe it’s really a different voice with the same voiceprint?
Several weeks ago, I’d put the day’s words for the night and still had enough in the tank to randomly cast about for whatever might be next and give it a few hours of pre-writing development (too many syllables for think shit up). Somewhere in this a stray thought about famous Italian luthier, Stradarvari of Cremona (it’s not that stray a thought, there is a dormant music column on this blog) lands. This typically leads to similar thoughts about Amati of Cremona.
Imagining the competition between these two rival luthiers (stringed instrument maker, including more recently guitars) in the same city leads to “ooh, what if a girl named Amati fell for a boy named Stradavari…the Romeo & Juliet of expensive violins!” And this is where the critical voice gets busy throwing hard elbows, I pitched the story wrong even to myself.
Busting out Romeo and Juliet implies a certain kind of tragic story of freshly minted Renaissance teenagers who when faced with the crushing weight of their respective families’ mutual animosities choose suicide to preserve their love. Nearly every commentator in the more than four hundred years of the play has continuously asserted that the two leads have to be teenagers (Romeo being 14 at most and Juliet maybe 13) in order to answer the question – “who commits suicide when they can’t have their way romantically?”
The play was written in the late 16th Century and set in 15th Century Italy both eras in which no one had much of proper medicine, understanding of juvenile psychology or hope that more than half of all children would survive to adulthood. Teenage marriages, especially for women, happened frequently in order for her to get started on her eight or more pregnancies. Careful reading of various profiles of historical ladies on Wikipedia seems to show that enough of the time the responsible parents arranging these matches would hold the girls back a couple years until their later teen years.
The people living then might not have understood adolescence as we do now, but they did get the part about the immediate hit of puberty being good for stormy domestic relations and slammed doors. Certainly, they knew that the older the newlyweds were at the beginning of that marriage the more likely the response to not landing on the lover they wanted would be to, in this wisdom from The Kings Speech – “can’t they just carry on privately?” The sane approach to disappointing arranged marriages. Thus, Romeo and Juliet are in their early teens where they can only see their love being everything and die for it.
The above doesn’t really fully explain why setting this type of four-hanky tragedy among the luthiers of Cremona, just doesn’t work. It boils down to violin makers being the wrong sort of occupation to use the Romeo & Juliet outline. They were essentially well compensated craftsmen of the Upper Middle Class, not the lords and ladies of the original play with the legal right to and social obligation to carry swords and duel. More than a few people have also commented that the Montagues and Capulets spent so much time brawling in the streets that the two factions weren’t much different than street gangs with money. This makes the update to street gangs without money for West Side Story an easy leap.
People named Amati, Guarneri and Stradavari could get caught up in the rumbles of two powerful wealthy families roiling the streets if you assume that feuding Noble Family A patronizes Amati and feuding Noble Family B patronizes Stradavari. Neither luthier operation would sell to the rival family to keep and make the peace, or they would wink and nod moving the product out the back door. None of this leads to stabbing each other on the streets…especially since the cynical reasons for pitching a musically themed version of Romeo & Juliet is to close the square for Great Soundtrack built-in what with at least three pieces titled Dueling Violins.
Yes, the pride in one’s own product versus those other guys would lead to conflict but nothing lethal. You could see the two master craftsmen throwing a fist or two and then arranging the concert. Maybe there’s an affair between the adults but now we’re already too far from the Shakespeare play. There’s one slight possibility given my three minutes looking it up on Wikipedia, the third Amati trained the first Guarneri and the first Stradavari…so two apprentices throwing down to take over the old master’s business. Still not the Shakespeare play.
It matters because the middle of the play requires Romeo to get into a big fight with Juliet’s cousin, Tybalt, that results in a Capulet death. Dramatists and other writers have always depended on having the characters’ own decisions cause their grief. Romeo shrugs off various insults because – “dude, I just married your cousin.” His good friend, Mercutio, takes the gauntlet because – “really, that’s the last straw!” – and then dies making Romeo too angry to stop himself. Doing these scenes with people that don’t have the easy access to the steel can be done…at the expense of too many pages used up on expository backstory.
So, when my critical voice saw this immediately and yelled at me to stop pitching it as anything like the Shakespeare play, what did I actually think up? A sitcom in most cases. A sexy romantic movie with an awesome soundtrack in a few other cases. And if I really need it to be a tragedy, I’ll just give Mrs. Stradavari-Guarneri breast cancer and we’re done.
Why is it potentially a sitcom? The property trades on the comedic conflict of the two sets of in-laws figuring it out when they come over to the kids’ house for Sunday dinner. Barbs from Master Guarneri that Master Stradavari never did his frets correctly leading to – “Papa, no business tonight please!” And then there’s a violin duel.
What sitcoms are the closest? Mostly I was thinking Dharma and Greg, where a hippie girl lands on an uptight boy attorney leading to interesting family dinners. But you can see aspects of many sitcoms, like if Darren Stevens had his parents visit more than a couple episodes of Bewitched.
For the sexy drama version, now we’re cooking with gas. Stormy passionate women (or men, it’s the 21st Century, gender-switching will be attempted and have the same chances of working with an audience) raising their voices to get exactly what they want. Doors slamming with almost the regularity of the average farce. Lots of kissy-kissy scenes backlit at sunset while on picnic among the field of pretty flowers. Followed by a determination to build the best violin ever in order to have something that plays up to the abilities of this tempestuous partner who combines the talents of Isaac Stern and Jimi Hendrix. Okay, there have been times when perhaps I’ve watched too many Cinemax movies from the out-and-out Skin-Max era (not really there aren’t any angry housewives played by former Playmates who scheme to kill their overbearing husbands and there is too much good music).
On second thought, I’m an SF and Fantasy writer. Let’s take the sexy drama version and really jump down the rabbit hole with both feet. The passionate luthier couple must make the violin that the Devil might want to swipe on his way to Georgia (probably the baggage handlers destroyed his original instrument) and play up to the quality of the instrument in order to save the world from the Evil Counterpoint. Or the average trance created by misusing the average love potion or…even our excellent chance of rehashing a work lovingly referred to as Orpheus 5.0 (Wrinkle in Time being Orpheus 3.5, just sayin’). We’ll still need the hot and steamy…
None of which exactly pitches as Romeo & Juliet Set Among Anything or Meet Tony the Tiger. And that was my original point; the archetypes we sometimes fall back on to explain our work when we only have 30 seconds to get past a gatekeeper aren’t always an exact fit. But there typically is an actual story lurking in the collective unconscious that does fit what’s on the page, the problem is that this hypothetical story archetype is itself derivative of the main archetype that only fits as well as that extra pair of shoes in the back of the closet. Naturally, this story is usually almost as unknown as yours. Mileage always varies.Anyway, I appreciate your forbearance as I give a little insight into the voices in my head fully grokking the double entendre that a writer in Work it Out on Paper Mode is only a bad breakfast burrito away from needing medical intervention. Knock on wood at the absence of getting caught. And…as always, you’re invited to write your own stories.
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