Excerpt from the novel 'A Gypsy Boy Called Shakespeare'

I’m Shakespeare. Funny, isn’t it? People use to laugh when they hear my name, but gipsy names can be funny sometimes. The day we are born, parents give us names to match their moods, or hopes, or idols. Some love it, some hate it, but as long as I bear the name of a famous writer I think I should consider myself a fortunate one. I had a colleague at school who had been named after a famous karate fighter: Bruzli. He was fortunate as well. Less fortunate was a cousin of mine. They called him Paracetamol. That’s really bad. How sick can you get in the winter and how desperate should you be to recover from a cold to give your child the name of a medicine?

The story goes that mom’s parents made arrangements to marry her with dad when she was just thirteen. But mom said no. She said she wouldn’t marry dad until she reads Romeo and Juliet. She believed that Shakespeare’s story was in fact her story and whatever love was, she needed to know about it from the famous writer. And here she had a valid point, as my grand-grandpa used to say. She was a Julieta herself in her birth certificate, and my father – don’t laugh! – a Romeo.

Reading Shakespeare’s play, mom found out that Juliet was fourteen when she met Romeo so she decided she wouldn’t marry dad until that age. Her parents got mad, but my mom wouldn’t move an inch.

 ‘It was Shakespeare himself who decided that, so leave me alone! If you marry me earlier I might end up with the wrong child and the entire love story would go totally wrong.’

Shakespeare’s love story would go totally wrong anyway, but at that point my mom wouldn’t know about that. She didn’t even finish reading the play. She was just looking to find a reason to hold on to her girlhood for as long as she could. She just needed a bit more time to figure out what marriage was all about.

‘I tell you! I’m not marrying!’ she’d cry out.

Her parents turned to their oldest for help. They waited for grand-grandpa to step forward and say something to cool her off. But the old man surprised them all.

‘I think this girl has a valid point, here,’ he said. ‘Without Romeo and Juliet, there would be no Shakespeare!’

And that’s how a new Shakespeare was born.