I Love Shakespeare

What’s in a name?

Love this discussion about Petruchio.

In Q2 of Romeo and Juliet (1599), at what modern editors would number 3.1.90, occurs a line of type, centered and reading “Away Tybalt.” It looks like a stage direction, and is so taken by most editors. But in 1960, George Walton Williams wrote an article claiming that this is in fact a line of dialogue. The Q2 compositor doesn’t use “Away” to mean “Exit,” speech prefixes for minor characters are often omitted, and there is a neat parallel later in the scene with Benvolio’s “Away, Romeo.”

Williams has a plausible argument, and, in any case, he is by common consent irreproachable. (As with Sara Lee, nobody doesn’t love GWW.) But his claim has put a sting in Rene Weis, with which he might do mischief in his Arden3 edition of the play. Since Weis accepts “Away, Tybalt” as speech, he needs a speaker. And where a less adventurous editor might settle for “Another Capulet” or “Tybalt’s follower,” Weis decides that the line is spoken by “Petruchio.” [!!!]

Now there is a Petruchio in the play: he is one of the three young men, including Romeo, whom Juliet asks the Nurse to identify for her toward the end of the ball scene. “Young Petruchio” is therefore currently present in Verona, as well as sufficiently friendly to the Capulets to be invited to the ball, sufficiently young to go looking for trouble in the streets, and of sufficient social rank to address Tybalt as “Tybalt” rather than “sir.”

The other young man has of course the same credentials and might be thought to be marginally more likely for being more familiar: the Nurse identifies him immediately, but only thinks the other to be young Petruchio. Still, “The son and heir of Old Tiberio” would be an ungainly prefix for a two-word speech. Petruchio is the better choice.

Shakespeare may in fact have been having a little intertextual fun here, because we hear earlier in the scene that Old Capulet and his cousin last masked some thirty odd years ago at “the nuptial of Lucentio,” which sounds like the last scene of Shrew. Admitttedly, we don’t hear of any masking or dancing at Lucentio’s “banquet,” but maybe that happened after we left, and in any case, old men tend to remember with advantages.

If the Capulet cousins were in the audience for Kate’s submission speech, one expects they were deceived into taking it at face value. But more important, if his brother-in-law’s wedding was thirty years ago, the Tamer himself must now be (by Our Lady) inclining to threescore, and clearly not the Petruchio of the Capulet ball. This might be his son, with something of his old man’s truculence, or even—eheu fugaces—his grandson.

Probably neither, however, is Tybalt’s companion. The key to solving that problem is the fact that when Petruchio—the real Petruchio—first appears on stage, he calls himself “a gentleman of Verona.” This immediately recalls the two titular gentlemen, and –sure enough—we find one of them on Capulet’s guest list: “Signor Valentio and his cousin Tybalt.” Tybalt’s cousin!

Of course, “Valentio” isn’t exactly “Valentine,” but Shakespeare may have felt the need for a variant to distinguish him from Mercutio’s brother, Valentine. “Signor” might sound like someone too mature for gang-banging, but Valentine may have earned the honorific for his legendary captaincy of supremely high-minded outlaws, and, in any case, he is (like Fredinand) the son-in-law of the Duke of Milan. Since he has a record for armed robbery, he would appeal to Tybalt as a formidable back-up, yet Valentine has a sense of moderation as well—he forbade his footpads to do violence to silly women or poor passengers. This is just the man to say, “That’s enough, Tybalt. Let’s go.” (His outlaws’ enthusiasm for Valentine’s linguistic skills was a recognition that he could holler “Stand and deliver” in whatever language was appropriate to the victim.)

Weis’s “Petruchio” opens a fertile field of investigation if one may shop the canon to give names to the anonymous inhabiting the locale. I thought of Dromio for the illiterate servant with the guest-list, but since slavery is probably illegal in Verona, I settled for Launcelot Gobbo, who, after getting in trouble in Belmont over inseminating the Moor, might well have looked for a new job. The anonymous Nurse—(forget the Angelica business)—could well be Nell Quickly. The Capulets, like many Italian aristocrats, often employ English servants, and Mrs Q has already, flouting her employer’s wishes, helped Anne Page to run off and marry the man she loves. For the apothecary, who has seen better times, is very short of money and has learned that “the world’s law” is no friend of his, who else but Shylock?

Other and probably better discoveries will surely follow. Hopefully, they will observe the maxim that resonance trumps probability.

Or it might just be a stage direction.

There are several others in the play named and not necessarily seen.

Like Antony and Potpan and Nell and Susan Grindstone amongst the Capulet servants.

All of them knaves according to Capulet’s commands.

Also the son and heir of old Tiberio and the afore-mentioned young Petruchio.

The party guests named in the letter the servant can’t read. Illiteracy and literacy being sharply delineated by the Petrarchan love of Romeo and the grounded first true love of Juliet. Artifice vs Nature.

‘Signior Martino and his wife and daughters;

County Anselme and his beauteous sisters;

the lady widow of Vitravio;

Signior Placentio and his lovely nieces;

Mercutio and his brother Valentine;

mine uncle Capulet, his wife and daughters;

my fair niece Rosaline; Livia;

Signior Valentio and his cousin Tybalt,

Lucio and the lively Helena.’

A fair assembly indeed as in the ball took place and one assumes they are among the mingling guests,

including

Valentine the absent brother of Mercutio.

And just where the hell is Rosaline, except on about five or six key characters lips and on the invitation. A Capulet and Juliet’s cousin. Sister to Tybalt, no; Lord Capulet’s side of the family and fair?

Then those musicians first, second, and third: Simon Catling, Hugh Rebeck and James (Jack) Soundpost. Usually assigned character descriptions as 1st 2nd 3rd Musician when they are readily identifiable and have specific monikers. The music of love in the play being firmly grounded in words and not music, as in the callous musicians hanging out for a free meal while the supposedly dead Juliet lies upstairs. No music with her silver sound for heart’s ease unless you pay for it. The Friar had promised them a gig he knew would not be going through.

It’s funny that the servant names are very English and not very Italian.

The watchmen likewise first second third. No names but there are more than just two companions commanded by the first:

‘go some of you whoe’er you find attach’ suggests several to search the immediate vicinity and arrest suspects,

‘go tell the prince’ is to Paris’ page

‘the Capulets’ 2nd watchman

and ‘the Montagues’ 3rd watchman

and then some others search.

Who’s left? The ghosts of Mercutio and Tybalt?

So how many are there?

The citizens too who are sick of the feuding and interrupt the first street brawl.

All help to populate this civic fiction, this two hours traffic of our stage.

My favourite bit of aurally nominally truthful text is Juliet’s:

My ears have not yet drunk a hundred words
Of that tongue’s utterance, yet I know the sound:

and indeed their recently spoken and shared sonnet amounts to about 90 words for Romeo.

Art thou not Romeo and a Montague?

What’s in a name?

Sound and fury signifying nothing. Or everything. Or something.