My Memoirs - Citizen of the World

memorize the entire dialogue, though, which was becoming an
increasingly daunting task. The audience would notice the
slightest error and, on top of that, most boys and girls all over
America probably know the entire scene of Romeo and Juliet by
heart. We were under pressure not to mess up.
As we all know, Shakespeare’s famous play attributes the tragic
ending of the teenage lovers to the rivalry that existed between
their families, the Montagues and the Capulets. This conveyed the
sentiment of a generation gap, which makes this play very
appealing to the youth of the world.
My costume was a hat with pheasant feathers, a shirt that was
actually my wife's blouse (with several folds in the front), and a
vest made of green velvet. My wife made several adjustments so
that I would look more like someone from Verona (or a Swiss
Guard at the Vatican) - very tight pantyhose to cover my legs, a
pair of slippers with pointed toe shoes, and a sword inside a sheath.
I resembled an authentic knight of the XVI Century.
Dr. da Silva's uniform was his wife's dress. It was fairly consistent
with Juliet's garden because it had a rose print. A large bra filled
with cotton and lamb’s wool filled the spaces, but one became
larger than the other and he wanted them to be symmetrical. After
a few tries and many laughs, both of his breasts looked OK. He
only needed long hair to look like a Juliet of 1596. I really
preferred a blond Juliet, but Dr. da Silva went with a brunette wig.
All that was left was to learn the lines and to recite them in a nice,
Old English accent. That was not an easy task. Neither Dr. da
Silva nor I were born in an English speaking country, so it wasn’t
even our first language to begin with.
Here is the dialogue from the scene as written by William
Shakespeare, first published in 1597 (with modern Portuguese
adaptations):
144