meo and Juliet quest: Part Six
Oct 1, 2016 | Audio, Romeo and Juliet
The Romeo and Juliet quest: Part Six
We’re now halfway through our competition to win one of five copies of the forthcoming Romeo and Juliet narrated by Richard Armitage. If you need to get up to speed on what this is all about please read the first post here. This should be easy-peasy. Don’t try to send us the answers now. Save them until November 26 when we’ll tell you how. And don’t panic if you still haven’t got all the answers. The final question will be on November 20 so you’ll have almost a week to catch up.
Here are four portraits of famous personages you’ll find one way or another in the forthcoming story. Simple question. Who are they?
a) Something princely about him even if he was a commoner.
b) This chap was supposed to be saintly but failed that test on many counts. He also went by two names. We’d like both.
c) Brilliant, bonkers or bad boy, this fellow came to a hot and sticky end in Florence.
d) This noble lady from Mantua was sketched here by an artist she knew personally. One Leonardo da Vinci.
The Romeo and Juliet quest: Part Seven
Oct 8, 2016 | Audio, Romeo and Juliet
The Romeo and Juliet quest: Part Seven
We’re closing in on our competition to win one of five copies of the forthcoming Romeo and Juliet narrated by Richard Armitage. If you need to get up to speed on what this is all about please read the first post here. Don’t try to send us the answers now. Save them until November 19 when we’ll tell you how.
This one should be easy-peasy. Richard kind of gave a bit of the game away back in July on Twitter…
.@audiblecom on a lighter note Trebbiano V Garganega? pic.twitter.com/A1RFHs7o6Z
— Richard Armitage (@RCArmitage) July 16, 2016
His ever-vigilant fans were on this like a shot and rapidly connected Verona to his tweet. Two and two were swiftly put together and very soon I found myself inundated with people wanting to know if a Romeo adaptation was on the cards.
Let’s go back to that tweet and Audible’s response to it…
@RCArmitage hmmm… that’s a tough one. Perhaps a blend / might put an end / to this bitter feud of men?
— Audible (@audiblecom) July 18, 2016
In Shakespeare and the sources he used we know that Capulet and Montague are two Veronese houses at loggerheads with one another. But we don’t have a clue why. Feuds were scarcely uncommon at the time, in Italy or England. In an extended audiobook version, though, I felt we needed to understand a bit more about what began the vendetta.
You will have to wait until December 6 to find out the answer. But as the two tweets above hint, it’s connected to two important grapes used in Verona’s very busy wine industry, Garganega and Trebbiano. Not household names but if you’re a wine drinker I bet you’ve supped both of them over the years.
Two questions.
a) One of the best Garganega wines from the Verona region is a dry and often straw-coloured white named after a small comune of fewer than seven thousand inhabitants to the east, now famous worldwide. What’s it called?
b) When Friar Laurence has married Romeo and Juliet in this version he proposes a toast from a bottle of his own, a wine you might expect a priest to have at hand. Here are a few lines from the script…
It was the oldest, most precious vintage he had… from Tuscany, made from a harvest dried on hurdles set above the ground then fermented slowly and stored. Ten years old this was. Sweet as honey and much the same colour.
‘The grape’s Malvasia,’ he pointed out.
What wine — Tuscan, a dessert one — was Laurence offering them?