Romeo and Mercutio
Mercutio
is a poet; he’s the jester of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
Not the funny hat wearing type, but the one who says what you are thinking,
or maybe what you didn’t know you were thinking; however, he’s confusing
at times. Benvolio looks puzzled walking, talking with him. When
Mercutio becomes enraptured with thought, Romeo soothes him: “Peace, Peace
Mercutio, Peace. Thou talks’t of nothing”(I.iv.101-102), but Mercutio
talks of love, manhood, and sets the future. For Romeo, Mercutio
is a friend, a confidant. Mercutio advises Romeo. Given the action
of the play, however, Mercutio may not be such a reliable source for advice
concerning manhood or love for that matter, which raises the question of
Mercutio’s motives, and what are the causes of Mercutio’s witty, yet harsh
tongue. Why is Mercutio so set against Romeo having not only love but
also women in his life? The advice and reactions of Mercutio
prove that he is not only a misogynist, but has a deeper, intense relationship
with Romeo. Perhaps, the title of the play should be Romeo and Mercutio,
the unrequited love of two men in Verona. A poet, a dreamer,
a cynic, Mercutio. Impulsive, eager, youthful, Romeo.
Mercutio wants attention and affection from Romeo.
Though there is a sarcastic, bawdy and comedic sense in the language Mercutio
uses when he is speaking to Romeo, there is an underlying tone of frustration,
hurt, and admiration for Romeo. This comes out when Mercutio talks
of love and manhood.
Mercutio talks of love. He observes his friend Romeo torturing himself
for the love of the mistress Rosaline. The first moment where
Mercutio and Romeo are together, Romeo talks of being heavy with love, and
“it pricks like a thorn”(I.iv.26). When Mercutio answers,
his misogynist attitude shines through . He says to be rough with love
and you, Romeo, won’t be hurt. “Pricking” may satisfy what you need,
you need nothing from women other than that. For example, Mercutio
rants: “If love be rough with you, be rough with love. Prick
love for pricking, and you beat love down”(I.iv.28-29). Mercutio speaks
again of love during his most famous speech in the play. He uses Queen
Mab to soar through a dream sequence. When Mab reaches “lover’s
brains,” Mercutio’s tone shifts(I.iv.76-77). In his story, Mab quickly
follows lovers to lawyers and soldiers, which Mercutio has nothing good to
say about. Some would say Mercutio is bitter, a cynic who has been hurt too
many times by love, so he goes manic when speaking of it. Maybe this
bitterness comes from his relationship with Romeo; Mercutio not getting
what he wants.
Again, Mercutio’s anger shines through in Act II sc. i. When Mercutio
speaks of women and love, he speaks of sex. He and Benvolio can’t find Romeo
at the Masquerade, so Mercutio tries to conjure him, sounding very mysoginistic.
He implies women are only good for sex. He implies that it is not love
that torments Romeo but sex. For instance, Mercutio states, “I conjure
thee by Rosaline’s bright eyes…and quivering thigh, and the demesnes that
there adjacent lie”(II. i .21-24). Benvolio cuts in saying Mercutio
will anger Romeo. Mercutio replies with explicit sexual imagery by
saying “To raise a spirit in his mistress’ circle…letting it stand there
stand till she had laid it and conjured it down”(II.i .26-30). Shakespeare
is using this bawdiness for comedic purposes, but there is more to it.
Through his bawdy language and anger, Mercutio becomes the fool because he
can’t keep his harsh tongue to himself. Mercutio’s harsh tongue shows
his misogyny and the hard feelings he has towards Romeo because Romeo giving
his attention to someone else, a woman.
Mercutio’s bawdy humor about love shows through again when Romeo joins his
friends after his night with Juliet. Mercutio starts poking at Romeo
by saying he is sexually spent: “Without his roe, like a dried herring.
O flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified”(I.iiv.39-41). Next, Mercutio
lists legendary and great fictional women calling them gypsies and harlots,
which shows his distaste, furthermore, even for fictional women.
Romeo and Mercutio begin jesting. They have a battle of wits with heavy
connotations of homosexuality: “Nay, I am the very pink of courtesy.
“Pink” for flower”(I.ii.v58-59). They talk of the goose, the fool.
The “wild-goose” chase between them, whoever loses is the fool. Mercutio’s
chase after Romeo; Romeo’s chase after Rosaline or Juliet. The one
doing the chasing is the fool, the love fool. At the end of this jest,
Mercutio’s true feelings of hurt and admiration shine through. Here,
he also uses bawdy humor to make his point:
Why, is not this better now than groaning for love? Now art thou sociable,
now art thou Romeo, now art thou what thou art, by art as well as by nature.
For this driveling love is like a great natural that runs lolling up and
to hide his bauble in a hole. (II. Iv.90-95)
Mercutio is saying this earlier jest with Romeo is the true Romeo.
It is not natural for Romeo to have such heavy feelings of love for a woman,
it is only natural for him to “hide his bauble in a hole.”
Mercutio’s and Romeo’s conversations of love show Mercutio’s understanding
of Romeo’s impulsiveness. Perhaps, if Romeo took Mercutio’s distaste for
women to heart, the tragedy would have been altered. The most important
love to Mercutio is the love between men, not between men and women because
women are good for only sex.
Due Mercutio’s inability to hold his tongue and his set views of manhood,
the rising action of the duel is the catalysis for Romeo and Juliet’s downfall.
Mercutio not only has strong views of love, but also of what it means to
be a man. Mercutio talks of manhood. Mercutio is wrapped up in the
idea of manhood being fulfilled and defined by the battle, the size of sword.
In his Queen Mab speech, he spends some extra time on the soldier:
Sometime she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck, and then dreams he of cutting
foreign
throats, of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades, of healths five fathom
deep, and then anon drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes and, being
thus frighted, swears a prayer or two and sleeps again. (I. Iv. 87-91).
Mercutio has a strong distaste for the Capulet’s Tybalt. He points
out Tybalt’s pompous sword fighting and general disposition. Mercutio
talks to Benvolio: “O, he’s the courageous captain of compliments”(IIiv20-21).
But his general irritation goes beyond Tybalt’s personality. Mercutio
is threatened by Tybalt because Mercutio has a strong definition of what
it means to be a man. Beyond having sex with women because that is
what they are good for, Mercutio defines a man by his willingness to fight
for the sake of fighting to defend personal honor. While explaining
Tybalt’s qualities to Benvolio, Mercutio says one ironic phrase: “A
challenge, on my life”(I.iiv.9). If he only knew.
Act III sc. I is the turning point of the play. Mercutio’s true ideals
of what a man should be come through. Mercutio is angry, almost hurt when
Romeo says to Tybalt, “Good Capulet, which name I tender as dearly
as mine own, be satisfied”(III.i.72). To Mercutio, Romeo is supposed
to not only stick his bauble in a woman’s hole, but also an enemy.
Mercutio’s inability to hold his tongue and his strong ideals of fighting
causes his death, leading the heightened tragedy of the play.
Mercutio’s dying words are “A plague on both your houses”(III.i.111).
He set the tone.
The scene is also homoerotic in nature, suggesting Mercutio’s homosexuality
even further: the sword being the phallic symbol and the act
which takes places, the stabbing. An image swells of these young strapping
boys fighting for their manhood. Mercutio’s and Tybalt’s first
words are heavy with innuendoes, for instance, Tybalt states that Mercutio
consortest with Romeo. Mercutio replies “Here is my fiddlestick…”(III.i.49-50).
Tybalt: “Here comes my man”(III.i.57). Mercutio: “But I’ll be hanged,
sir, if he wear your livery”(III.i.57-60).
The importance of Mercutio’s last scene and Shakespeare’s motive is highly
debatable. In an article from Shakespeare Quarterly, “The Death of
Mercutio,” Raymond V. Utterback enters Dryden’s and Dr. Johnson’s debate
as to why Mercutio is killed off. Utterback defines Dryden’s take on
Mercutio’s death as “resulting form an arbitrary act of a desperate dramatist
and is designed to keep Mercutio from running away with the play. It
is apparent also that Dryden himself considered this means of dismissing
Mercutio unnecessary and even undesirable(Utterback 106). There is
truth in what Dryden says. Mercutio does have the capability to runaway
with the play, and that would have been interesting. But he fails to
see the importance of Mercutio’s death, which Utterback points out that Dryden’s
comment “tends to discourage inquiry into the latter kind of explanation(Utterback
106). Dryden recognizes the importance of Mercutio’s character,
so the latter kind of explanation is without Mercutio’s death
the tragedy between Romeo and Juliet would no t have been carried through.
Next, Utterback describes Dr. Johnson’s take on Mercutio’s death as being
“simply the means by which Shakespeare managed to terminate the role and
dismiss a character no longer needed and for whom no more stage to was spared”(Utterback106).
But why such a dramatic death? Utterback points out that other minor
characters are discreetly extinguished, why not Mercutio? Because,
the consequences of Mercutio’s death set up the rest of the action of the
play. Utterback agrees with me by saying, “Furthermore, in the
circumstances which lead to [Mercutio’s death] and in the details of the
way it is dramatized there appears a pattern which also governs the primary
subject of the play, the tragedy of the lovers”(Utterback 107).
It is a tragedy that Mercutio dies, but as he is dying, he instills one last
time what it means to be a man As Mercutio rants a plague on both your
houses, Romeo knows Mercutio death needs avenging, above love, above Juliet.
Romeo needs to be a man in Mercutio’s eyes, dead or alive.
Because Mercutio is the poet, the one who says the sad truth; because he
is a raging ball of masculinity, the ultimate Shakespearean sex, drugs, and
rock’n’roll, he must die. I wouldn’t say the tragedy is solely Mercutio’s
fault, he just got the ball rolling.
Works Cited
Shakespeare, William. Romeo
and Juliet. Washington Square Press: New York, 1992.
Utterback, Raymond V. “The Death of Mercutio” Shakespeare Quarterly
Spring. 1973: 105-116.
