THE BOOK : JULIET ’S NURSE by LOIS LEVEEN

Anndrea Hughes asks Your gorgeous book rekindled my love for Shakespeare! Would you ever write another prequel for a different play?

Lois Leveen responds I don’t think of Juliet’s Nurse as only a prequel, because we get to see what happens to Angelica beyond the events in Shakespeare’s play. That part of her story is also very important to me. But it’s true, I loved writing Juliet’s Nurse so much, especially playing with allusions to Shakespeare’s play, that it is tempting to do another novel on the same theme. I even re-read Macbeth to see if Lady M would call to me. Ultimately, however, I decided that I didn’t want to go in that direction for my next book, for fear of being pigeonholed forever after as “the novelist who rewrites Shakespeare.” But that doesn’t mean I won’t come back to him at some later point, or perhaps take this approach with a famous work of literature by another author.

Sonja Topolinsky asks We are of the thought that centuries ago, sex was a wife’s duty and was for procreation. In Juliet’s Nurse there were a number of erotic situations between Angelica and Pietro that were more than a duty. Was this your imagination or was this researched and found that we falsely believe sex was not to be enjoyed except with a prostitute?

Lois Leveen responds Sonja, you get right down to business! Actually, until about the mid-18th century, the prevailing attitude in Europe was that women were the lascivious ones. So our idea of women having to be seduced/tricked into sex, or at least being passive participants, would have been completely strange in Angelica’s world. The Catholic Church promoted the idea that abstinence was more pious, and sometimes women who wanted to avoid sex might have a “religious experience” to avoid marriage, but Angelica’s enjoyment would not have been anomalous many women enjoyed sex! And “sex” would have encompassed a range of physical activities.

Irene Watchorn asks Did you base Angelica’s survival instinct and emotional strength on someone in your life?

Lois Leveen responds What a great question. The truth is, I didn’t know how Angelica would respond to the things that happened to her until each scene was written. By the end of the play, she has lost everyone she loves (thanks, Shakespeare!), but I did not want a novel that was only about devastating loss. So I just watched how she contended with each thing as it came up, and though it sounds hokey, she kind of took over the story and showed me what she meant to do. Some of the specifics do draw on people in my life, particularly a family member who lost a loved one to suicide and was very honest in sharing the range of emotions that evokes. But I think I wrote Angelica because I wanted to understand how someone survives such devastating loss, without the treatment and tools we have today.

Ian Gledhill asks Which do you enjoy more, and why research or writing? and Cheryl Heide asks How long did it take to do the research for the book and what were your sources?

Lois Leveen responds I usually start writing from the very beginning of

‘Ignorance is the better part of bravery, I suppose’

a project, because I’m trying to find the characters’ voices. Some of what I write that early must be revised a lot — or gets cut entirely — later in the process, but not writing at all would just be impossible for me. Conversely, I also need to start research from the very beginning because really I knew nothing about 14th-century Italy when I started this project. In terms of what types of research I did I read medieval cookbooks to plan meals, and medieval medical manuals to figure out how pregnancies, infertility and breastfeeding would be handled. I did research on the impact of the plague, to understand how it continued to affect Italian society even after the initial outbreak ended. I read about fashion, which was key in this period not just in terms of what people wore but because fabric and clothing served as a kind of exchange commodity, the way we might think of currency or precious metals you would pawn or trade. I read a lot about vendettas and violence, and about marriage contracts. Visual art and material culture (coins, plates, whatever people would have in their houses) were also incredibly helpful.

Caroline Howe asks Why did you make Romeo an unsympathetic character?

Lois Leveen responds When I reread Romeo and Juliet, I was astonished by some of the things Romeo says and does. Really, I don’t deviate much from what Shakespeare gave us in regard to Romeo, although of course it is all presented through Angelica’s perspective, which is limited and reflects her protective feelings for Juliet. But I hope readers will go back to the play after finishing the novel and evaluate Shakespeare’s representation of Romeo for themselves.

Tamara T. Smith asks Where did the inspiration for the bees come from?

Lois Leveen responds I knew I needed a profession for Angelica’s husband, Pietro, but many jobs required being a guild member, which meant they excluded people from Pietro’s economic/social class. So as I was researching the era, I just plucked beekeeper at random (bees were kept for honey and for beeswax beeswax candles were the most luxurious form of lighting in this period). But I had to learn enough to write about Pietro, so I went on a tour of backyard beekeepers in Portland, Ore., where I live. In one day, I fell so in love with bees that I invited a beekeeper to place a hive in my yard, and I watched it through the seasons to inspire my writing. When you see a bee collecting pollen and nectar, that bee will not live long enough to use the honey made from what it collects. To me, this was a great analogy to the beautiful churches in Italy, which typically took centuries to complete. The person who designs the church, or the workers who lay the first stones, will not live to see it completed, but they labour knowing that there is something bigger than themselves that they are part of. As I searched for a way to understand how Angelica could live through so much loss, the bees provided this wonderful metaphor.

Noa Bordan asks What was it that drew you to take on the enormous task of this book, and gave you the courage to dissect such a well-known story?

Lois Leveen responds Last April, after the novel was finished, I spoke at the Shakespeare 450 conference in Paris, probably the world’s largest gathering of Shakespeare scholars, with participants from something like 80 different countries. And suddenly I realized the enormity of what I’d done. Shakespeare, the most famous playwright in English, and Romeo and Juliet, the most famous English-language drama. How could I have been so brazen? And yet, of course, there’s a huge literary tradition of reinterpreting Shakespeare (not to mention the stage tradition). Mostly I’m glad I didn’t think about it until the novel was done. Ignorance is the better part of bravery, I suppose.

Kim Merrick asks How much of the Nurse’s character, if any, came from your own female role models?

Lois Leveen responds I wouldn’t say Angelica is based on actual women or on particular role models. In fact, some of the fun of fiction writing is the way characters take on personalities of their own. (This is true for many characters. Tybalt, for example ... he kind of broke my heart, as I watched him grow up over the course of the novel.) By the end of Juliet’s Nurse, Angelica is a different person than she is on the first page, and I discovered how she would turn out as I wrote.