Kimberly Lang

Shakespeare on Romance:

Writing Tips from the Bard

Kimberly Lang

Need a plot? Turn to Shakespeare. You might as well; half of Hollywood has already. Ten Things I Hate About You. My Own Private Idaho. O. West Side Story. Scotland, PA. A Thousand Acres. Ran. It’s okay; Shakespeare doesn’t mind. In fact, he took the plots for many of his plays from somewhere else. So, if you’re going to borrow a plot, you may as well borrow from the Bard. After all, he’s been making audiences laugh, cry, and fall in love for four hundred years.

You, though, are more creative than that. You have your own non-Shakespearean plot to work with, but it’s still missing something. Our friend Shakespeare may be able to help you out there as well. He wrote at least a dozen plays focused on love—some tragic, some mature, and some simply funny as hell. His romantic comedies are a good place to look for ideas if your story just needs that something to make it work. Northrop Frye, the extraordinary scholar and critic, defined the major characteristics of Shakespeare’s romantic comedies. I present these characteristics (with my own modern ideas) here for you in the hope that they may point you in the direction of that something.

There’s an exotic setting. For Elizabethan Londoners, nothing was less romantic as day-to-day life in Elizabethan London. Shakespeare knew this, and he set his romances in far-flung places. (Italy seemed to be a particular favorite.) This exotic setting removes the audience from the everyday and commonplace and provides a sense of escapism. More importantly, it creates a sense of the exotic for the characters themselves. They may be people with the same basic hopes and dreams that we have, but they’re also foreign (i.e., not like us)—who knows what they’ll do next?

An exotic setting may be Paris (pretty exotic for those of us who live in Alabama), but you can also create this sense of the exotic by either giving one or both of your lovers unusual careers (CIA agent, corporate spy), or simply have one of them come from somewhere else (the Frenchman in Alabama).

There’s a temporary thwarting of lovers who are meant to be together. Well, duh.

Shakespeare’s lovers, however, are normally aristocratic, which adds a layer of responsibility to the characters’ actions. Power and fortunes are at risk—the lovers can’t just run off willy-nilly because more than just their lives and love are in the mix. In contemporary romance, you may not be able to put the kingdom in jeopardy, but the lovers’ responsibility to others (a business to run, family members to care for) can thwart our hero’s and heroine’s fledgling relationship.

Shakespeare’s lovers are also tethered to reality by more common types. Often functioning as the voice of reason in the lovers’ out-of-control world, these common folks are living in the much more mundane world of everyday life. Separated from the passion driving our hero and heroine, these secondary characters bring realism and sometimes rationality when necessary. They also pull us into the story—after all, the hero and heroine may be larger than life, but we’re not. Sometimes, they work against the hero and heroine. It may be that they know that the real world doesn’t always have happily-ever-after endings (and therefore want to spare the lovers disappointment), or maybe they have agendas of their own.

We know from the beginning, though, that this man and this woman are made for each other. Thwart away; we know that whatever is keeping them apart is temporary and able to be overcome.

There is opposition to the lovers that is outside of their control. For Shakespeare, this opposition was usually parental and, of course, this can still work very well. The opposition can also come from society or other external forces (think of the boy from the wrong side of the tracks and the preacher’s daughter). The important thing is that we root for the lovers against this opposition, because we know it will work out for the best.

Think of Romeo and Juliet. (Okay, so it’s not a comedy, but you just can’t beat that balcony scene.) The time-honored way to end family feuds was to marry off the children of the warring clans; their marriage is the ideal solution to the Capulet-Montague feud. That hatred is external opposition to their love and we root for them against it—especially since we know that their relationship will also be for the greater good.

There is a temporary escape to the “Green World”—a kind of wilderness. The “Green World” is kind of like escaping to the woods—the hero and heroine are temporarily away from society and the pressures of that society and external conflict. It can be a place of healing and a restful reprieve, or it can be a slightly scary place where they confront the important aspects of life and love. Either way, they’re out of their element, and this makes them uncomfortable, vulnerable, and open to learning something important. We see them grow in their understanding of themselves and their love for each other, and this is a major milestone in their relationship. This Green World doesn’t have to be an actual wilderness; it can be anywhere as long as the hero and heroine have the opportunity to focus on themselves and their relationship. So you can strand them in a remote cabin in the woods during a snowstorm—an actual, albeit white, “Green World”—or simply trap them in an elevator. Either way serves the purpose.

There are physical disguises or characters who disguise their true motives. Dress the heroine up in boys’ clothing—instant fun and a chance for the heroine to see things from the other side. (In Twelfth Night, Viola learns much about the man she loves simply because he thinks that she’s a boy named Cesario. Add that the secondary heroine, Olivia, falls in love with Cesario….) Have the villain pretend to be helping the lovers get together when he’s actually trying to drive them apart—instant conflict and intrigue. Send your characters to a costume party and have them interact without realizing it, or just let them pretend that they don’t know whom they are talking to—they’ll learn loads.

Of course, the unmasking (literal or figurative) creates another important plot point.

One or more of the characters move towards self-discovery. As we all know, our characters have to grow over the course of the novel. Static characters are boring. The best couples are those that bring out the best in each other. No matter how difficult or painful the lesson was, the characters are better people in the end. And that makes us like them even more!

There is a marriage (or at least the promise of one) and the image of future generations. This is a romance; of course our lovers have been heading to this point of great commitment. This is the start of the happily-ever-after. It’s at this point that the characters (and the audience) move from focusing on the present and start looking towards the future. Shakespeare’s heroines are going to run off and have lots and lots of beautiful babies—and so may yours—but it’s the sense of continuity that we get from the idea of babies that’s really important. Our lovers now face the world together, and that affects everything the future may bring.

There is a return to order as everyone takes his or her proper place back in society. Mom and Dad accept the marriage. The villain is caught and will be punished. The rightful heir is restored to the throne. Everyone goes back to the careers they love. Most likely, our hero and heroine have caused at least a little bit of trouble in their everyday lives. All these loose ends must be tied up and life returned to some semblance of normalcy—otherwise, those loose ends could come back later and mess up the happily-ever-after.

Make sure all of those sub-plots get tied up as well. Shakespeare is still catching hell over unfinished business in Taming of the Shrew. No one likes to be left hanging.

Some characters are excluded from the happily-ever-after ending. Not everybody gets to ride off into the sunset, and that’s okay. Even some of the good guys get left out. Take the guy who’s been in love with the heroine since high school. He’s not the hero; he doesn’t get the girl. That’s just the way life goes. It’s bittersweet, but, in a way, it emphasizes how lucky the hero and heroine are to have found true love.

If your good-guy-who-didn’t-get-the-girl is a strong enough character, you can always spin him off into his own book and let him find true love there.

So there you have it. Shakespeare’s tried and true characteristics of romance. They’ve certainly stood the test of time. What’s so wonderful is that these ideas are just as fresh and ready to go as they were in 1610. Take them and make them your own—maybe it’s just the something that your manuscript needs.

(On the chance that you didn’t find anything helpful to your manuscript here, I offer you this instead: The next time some Great Literature snob informs you that she doesn’t read those kinds of books, toss out Northrop Frye’s name and the fact that the common characteristics of Shakespeare’s romantic comedies—including the “Green World”—form an excellent basis for the analysis of modern romances. That should confuse her.)