Mercutio, Romeo, and the Nurse in the Street

Scene summary

In the street, Mercutio and Benvolio look for Romeo and wonder that he has not come home. Mercutio supposes that Rosaline torments him so much that he will end up mad. Benvolio says that Tybalt sent a letter to Romeo's father's house, and Mercutio imagines it is a challenge. Benvolio says Romeo will answer, but Mercutio doubts that the young man will face him: for him, Romeo is already dead, stabbed by a dark-eyed girl's eye and pierced by a love song. He describes Tybalt as the captain of courtesies and the duelist who fights by the fencing manuals, and mocks the fashionable dandies who cannot sit on the old bench.

Romeo arrives, and Mercutio greets him with mockery: he says he looks like a dried herring, fit only now for Petrarch's verses, before which Laura was a cook, and reminds him that he fooled them the night before. Romeo asks pardon for missing and says his affairs were serious. The two trade puns on the English word "pink," which means both "carnation" and "the height" of courtesy, and on the idea of a "goose chase," until Mercutio says it is better this way than moaning for love. Then the Nurse arrives with the servant Peter, and Mercutio greets her with crude jokes about her enormous dress, which Romeo calls a ship's sail, about her fan and about the hour of noon. The Nurse looks for Romeo; he introduces himself as the youngest of that name, Benvolio says she wants to invite him to supper, and Mercutio calls her a procuress, sings a song about an old hare and leaves with Benvolio.

The Nurse, indignant at Mercutio, complains to Romeo and to Peter, who tells her he would draw his sword if he saw anyone abuse her, with the law on his side. She warns Romeo that before saying what Juliet sent, she wants to know whether he will not take her to a "fool's paradise," that is, deceive her. Romeo swears he will not and tells her to tell Juliet to find a way to go to confession that afternoon at Friar Laurence's cell, where she will be married; he asks the Nurse to wait behind the abbey wall, where his servant will bring a rope ladder for the night. The Nurse agrees, says Juliet would rather see a toad than see Paris, and gets tangled up over a letter, the R of Romeo and of rosemary, before leaving with Peter.