Fairytales are often considered to be light entertainments, best enjoyed by young children before they go to sleep, usually in versions that have been altered significantly from their original sources, so as not to induce night terrors. In popular films and picture books we are presented with happy, young, resourceful heroes and heroines and their animal helpers who somehow always triumph over the evil that threatens them. Evil which is carefully framed so as too not seem too real. The stories collected by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm are, in the original at least, much more the stuff of nightmares. Rapunzel is no exception. Forgetting her magically long hair for a moment, this is basically a story of child abduction, where in a jealous old woman takes an infant from her mother and locks the child alone in a tower. Later, when the girl, now a young woman, is discovered and on the verge of being rescued, her captor takes her to a wasteland and abandons her and her newborn children, and then attempts to murder her lover, their father. Sweet dreams... Far more likely this story, and other fairytales like it were intended for adults. It is helpful to remember that in the pre-industrial world storytellers played an active role in the workplace, helping to occupy the minds and pass the time as people engaged in long hours of repetitive task work. The story as we know it originates in France, though a very similar story precedes it in 17th Century Italy. Which is roughly where Harlan Mathieu has placed us in his retelling. He takes us to Florence, late in the reign of the Medici Dynasty. His Crone is not known for witchcraft, but she still ends up with the child. And as to what it all has to do with Romeo and Juliet, well, perhaps you best read the tale...