The real tragedy of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is not that the title characters die. What is far more tragic: Juliet chooses a mere player (whose cheesy pick-up lines only sound good in iambic pentameter) when all the while the perfect-in-every-way Paris wants to commit to marriage!

The Properer Man spins the familiar characters from Shakespeare's famous play into a twenty-first American setting, featuring pop star Rome Ayo; the Harvard-educated suitor Con Pierce; Julia Cappell and her real-estate tycoon father; and, of course, Dr. Shae K. Speare, who supplies a happy ending-much more satisfying than a stage littered with corpses. The Properer Man will appeal to readers who simply want to spend a long afternoon in a modern world where perfect males really do exist, while the allusions to Shakespeare's characters, storyline, imagery, and oft-quoted passages mean the novella encourages text-to text comparisons. (The answers are included.)