Vigilant readers will surely note that the phrase “with all my worldly goods I thee endow,” which Carità Bercy memorizes so flawlessly and employs in self-defense to preserve her husband’s fortune, is part of the marriage service found in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer and does not appear in the Roman Catholic liturgy. Though I was raised in the Episcopal Church, where weekly readings from the Shakespearean English of Cranmer’s prose created a music all its own, I was educated by Carmelite nuns, during the period when the Latin mass was banned and the flat modern English translation offered few delights to the ear.
When it came time for Carità to marry her mad suitor, Ian Drohan, I wanted the ceremony to give her something to think about, something to arm her in the battlefield of church and state, and the words from the service I knew so well sprang to mind. It is the vow that Shakespeare himself would have taken when he brought his pregnant bride, Anne Hathaway, to the altar in 1582.
Shakespeare’s Juliet Capulet is a tragic heroine, doomed to die for love. But Verona Island is a world of my own creation, and I intended my Juliet to survive. More than that, I wanted her to triumph. Thus, at an important juncture, Carità reminds her young husband of his vow. “With all my worldly goods I thee endow,” she repeats, stressing the word “all.”
And the plot thickens.