text: An Interview With the Star-Crossed Lovers Historians poking around some old archives in Verona, Italy have made a surprising discovery. The city’s most famous couple, Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet, miraculously survived their bungled double suicide attempt, escaped from Verona, and took up residence in a combination vineyard, pasta factory, and olive orchard near Florence. For twenty years they kept their identities secret. Not even their crazy relatives knew where they were. This was wise, because some people were after Romeo for a couple of murders. In the meantime, Juliet’s balcony, Friar Lawrence’s cell and the Capulet burial vault have become tourist attractions, generating a lot of revenue for both the Capulets and the Montagues, who have gone into the tour guide and souvenir businesses together. Their little wooden replicas of Juliet’s balcony are especially popular. Twenty years after the famous happenings, a reporter from La Posta di Verona (“The Verona Post”), acting on a tip from an anonymous source, tracked the famous star-crossed lovers to their new home. They granted him an interview, after making him sign a blood oath that he wouldn’t tell anyone where they were, especially anyone with a sword. The reporter was astonished to see the couple, who looked nothing like their youthful family portraits. Romeo and Juliet had both gained weight, with plenty of middle-age spread. Romeo had gone bald and Juliet had a few gray hairs at her forehead. Both of them were richly dressed according to the fashion of the day, indicating a certain level of wealth. The reporter found them sitting on the veranda of their home, enjoying the evening sunset. Here is the transcript of the interview: LA POSTA DI VERONA: So you have been married now for ... what ... 20 years? JULIET: Yes. Our anniversary was last week. ROMEO: Last week? I thought it was two months from now. JULIET: No, dear. It was last week. You forgot again, like you do every year. I let it pass this time. ROMEO (to the reporter) : I’m not very good with dates. JULIET: It’s hard to forget the day we had to get married in secret and sneak you into my bedroom for a quickie wedding night. And oh yes - you killed my cousin and my fiancé. ROMEO: Do you have to keep reminding me of that? That was 20 years ago! (to reporter) She never shuts up! (to Juliet) Your cousin Tybalt was a real rat-catcher. He had it coming to him. And what fiancé? You couldn’t stand him. He was your father’s delusion. Who would want to marry a guy named Paris, anyway? Paris is a girl’s name. His parents must have been drinking too much Chianti when they named him. JULIET: Well, I always say, “What’s in a name?” He wasn’t a bad sort, just kind of dull. I didn’t hate him, I just found him kind of blah! He never followed me home after a party, like you did. That was pretty cool. Paris was too busy talking to Daddy to pay too much attention to me. He was old-fashioned that way, which is why he was so damned boring. LA POSTA DI VERONA: Interrupting. So tell me, do you have any children? Romeo and Juliet laugh hysterically. JULIET: We have ten children. I stopped trying to have any kind of figure ten years ago. ROMEO: So you can tell our in-laws they have a slew of grandchildren. That’ll make my mother happy, anyway . Suddenly looks over at window of small house on the property. What light from yonder window breaks? Shouts. Hey, you kids! Put out those torches! I’m not made of pitch, dammit! VOICE OF KID: But Dad, we’re busy playing boccie and we can’t see what we’re doing! ROMEO: How many times do I have to tell you not to play boccie after dark! You’ll knock yourselves out! You can’t win a game that way, anyway! VOICE OF KID: Ah, but Dad ... ! ROMEO: Do as I say! I’m your father! VOICE OF KID: Odds bodkins! ROMEO: What did you say? VOICE OF KID: Nothing, Dad. Good night. ROMEO: Good night! Mutters. Kids today! So impulsive! LA POSTA DI VERONA: You were pretty impulsive yourself, if I have the story right. ROMEO: Yeah, we were, weren’t we? JULIET: Well, you can’t blame a girl for going gaga over a guy who crashes her coming-out party, then sneaks into her back yard afterward, right under her parents’ noses. ROMEO: I was on the rebound from Rosaline at the time. JULIET: Oh yeah. The town slut. ROMEO: She wasn’t a slut! She was ... experienced for her age. JULIET: If that’s what you want to call it, go ahead. LA POSTA DI VERONA: Rosaline is doing very well for herself. She opened her own house, just up the street from the Capulet burial vault. Her girls get a lot of the tourist trade. She’s thinking of franchising her operation and opening houses in Florence and Padua. She calls herself La Felice Puttana . JULIET: Now that’s experienced. ROMEO: Hmmm. I always knew she’d make a name for herself. I just didn’t know how. LA POSTA DI VERONA: So you have been living here for 20 years? ROMEO: We’re in the wine and olive oil businesses. We have our own brands: Star-Crossed Lovers Pure Virgin Olive Oil and What’s in a Name Primo Chianti. All the best trattorie do business with us. We even have a couple of inns in Florence who buy our stuff. It’s made us rich. We can’t complain about THAT! LA POSTA DI VERONA: I’m glad to hear that you are so successful. Tell me, how many employees do you have? JULIET: Well, there’s Giulio the gardener, Clara the housekeeper, Antonietta the scullery maid, Arturo the butler ... ROMEO: He means how many employees in the business, not how many people we have around the house! JULIET: Oh. My mistake. ROMEO: We have a couple of hundred people working in the vineyard and the olive grove and the pasta factory. We don’t believe in outsourcing. No foreigners for us. Just good old Tuscan laborers, working in sweatshop conditions and liking it. We don’t fool around. They tried to unionize on us two years ago, but we put a stop to that! LA POSTA DI VERONA: What did you do? ROMEO: We gave them all a raise and improved their working conditions. Then they couldn’t say anything more because they had everything they wanted. Clever, huh? LA POSTA DI VERONA: Yes, very clever of you. Well, thank you both for the interview. I have to run now. I am catching a donkey cart to Padua to interview Petrucchio and Kate on their 20 th anniversary. JULIET: Say hello to them for us. We haven’t been in touch in ages. LA POSTA DI VERONA: I’ll do that. Thank you both, and arrivederci.