Love’s Heavy Burden
5 F/6 M (Genderqueer casting also welcome)
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Premise: Set a year after the events of Romeo and Juliet, Verona is now a famous place where people come to fall in love or end their lives. To visit the sick Lady Capulet unheeded, the countess Rosaline decides to fake an 8-month pregnancy to thwart various suitors. But her deception backfires, reigniting old feuds, and forcing her into humorous and serious situations regarding her own bodily autonomy.
For a tale set in classical times, this play is extremely topical!
ACT II - SCENE 3
(Enter Peter wheeling in the catatonic Lady Capulet with two musicians that follow.)
PETER
Come, play your notes and do our lord’s bidding that it may wake his lady.
MUSICIAN 1
We knew her soul’s music, sir.
MUSICIAN 2
Aye, she once was a lover of tempo.
PETER
Do not say ‘knew her’ or ‘once was, play her here presently.
MUSICIAN 2
We know not the song, ‘here presently’. Is it played at court?
PETER
You mistake. Play as if she was alive.
MUSICIAN 2
We know not that either but can improvise.
MUSICIAN 1
Aye, or can learn it for more than we are presently paid.
(Capulet enters.)
CAPULET
What’s this stalling of sound? I would hear life in these hallways. Where is thy lute’s revival?
PETER
They play me, my lord. I think to bargain more than have already been negotiated for.
CAPULET
Do they? Play my young friends, play what shall wake the sun from the horizon, for if thy notes shall eclipse my wife from her dark planet, you shall not busk in shadow, the streets of Verona for a decade. I am past wits for answer to her trance. I have even bought fools to make her laugh, but no smirk can her corners gather.
(Enter ‘pregnant’ Rosaline.)
ROSALINE
Hola, my cherished Uncle.
CAPULET
Must I catch my jaw before the floor doth meet it? Doth my eyes perceive shapes bigger than they appear?
PETER
I think I see the same as you, my lord.
CAPULET
You dare come to me like this?
ROSALINE
Think me deformed, Uncle. I merely come as a woman.
CAPULET
And now thy eight months isolation hath been explained. Leave us.
PETER
But our lady’s music. Shall we hear it?
CAPULET
Depart, I say, for if she cannot be wakened upon sight of her double niece, nothing will.
PETER
Come fellows, let’s away.
(Exit Peter and both musicians.)
ROSALINE
Content thyself, Uncle and I’ll give proper reason to this.
CAPULET
You have pained the remembrance of thy dead father and mother.
ROSALINE
Hold thy breath to give me words.
CAPULET
Thy loving Aunt whose heart did often match thee with her own daughter, who consoled thy grief, who encouraged thy esteem, who fed thee, who taught thee to read, write and think about the world, would shatter to see thee so taken before thy proper time.
ROSALINE
I am the only one who can shame myself. Be wary of thy phrases, Uncle.
CAPULET
You have stained the House of Capulet, and with it may have sparked another feud with Montagues. You are to be enjoined to Benvolio!
ROSALINE
You are set to enjoin me against my will, and many men come against my will, thus I am pregnant.
CAPULET
You shame the sun that touches thee with its light. Wait till dark that you may return home. I would have no one see thee like this or else start a war of rumors.
ROSALINE
Rumor? Was it not rumor that wrote me as a nun because I could not attach myself to Romeo? Because I could not see myself enjoined to a man’s romance, I must be enjoined to God to make men feel better about themselves? Rumor? Fie. I am storied in rumor, Uncle. And now I shall spark these wildfires of my own and have control of what people say of me though it doth not fit the norm. I’ll create my own rumors.
CAPULET
Who is the father?
ROSALINE
I’ll not give thee that answer.
CAPULET
Who is it, I say?
ROSALINE
It may be a Montague’s.
CAPULET
That’s closer to peace.
ROSALINE
It may be five Montague’s. It may be five Capulet’s. It may be the Prince of Verona!
CAPULET
Lower thy voice. You are a flame that seeks wood for burning.
ROSALINE
I tell you this Uncle, the feud that once lived through Capulets and Montagues now lives through men and women. You see old feuds but are blind to new divisions.
CAPULET
Go to. Wear a veil and hide thyself.
ROSALINE
I will not. I have packed myself in traveling to wake my Aunt, my lady whose care, whose perspective has indeed taught me to think deeply about the world and in this world I see a buffoon constrained by society’s prison, a man who cannot think for himself without the strict parameters of what all men should think.
CAPULET
Get thee from my sight. You disgrace me.
ROSALINE
I shall stun thee some more. Do you seek to keep me as confined as thy dead daughter? Did Juliet not go anywhere in this world, except to her room and church? Had she been allowed an education further out of door, she may not have couched her existence so much in one boy, in one grave.
CAPULET
Out.
ROSALINE
I’ll not be thy dead daughter. I shall live.
CAPULET
T’were better she was dead than you come to me like this!
ROSALINE
I hope the lady doth not have ears while she sleeps, Uncle. Let me speak with her and give effort to her revival.
CAPULET
You shall not, and since this debate doth not move thee, I’ll move thy aunt to another room. She lives somewhere twixt life and death and am certain her knowledge of thee would push her farther south. Mend thy ways, niece. Mend thy ways.
(Capulet exits pushing Lady Capulet in wheelchair.)
ROSALINE
Though I am at odds now with mine uncle, I’ll devise ways to get closer to my aunt. I have not come all this way without attempt. I’ll to Bianca with new ideas.
(Exit Rosaline.)
