Mercutio

Who He Is

Mercutio is a friend of Romeo and a kinsman of Prince Escalus and of Paris, but he is neither Montague nor Capulet, although he is on the Capulets' guest list in Act I, Scene 2, and his curse falls on both houses. He is the most mocking voice of the group: he jokes about love, about the book-learned duelists and about the Nurse, and he has a ready answer even for his own wound.

Trajectory

In Scene 4 of Act I, on the way to the ball, he tries to pull Romeo out of his sadness with mockery, saying they are wasting candlelight. When Romeo speaks of a dream, Mercutio answers with the long speech about Queen Mab, the midwife of the fairies who visits each person's dreams: the lover dreams of love, the lawyer of fees, the soldier of cutting the throats of foreigners. Romeo interrupts him, saying that he talks of nothing, and Mercutio agrees that dreams are the children of an idle brain.

In Scene 1 of Act II, he calls Romeo out in the street with crude jokes about Rosaline, without knowing that this passion is over.

In Scene 4 of Act II, he imagines Romeo "already dead, pierced by a dark-eyed girl's eye," and asks whether such a man will face Tybalt, who sent a challenge to his house. He describes Tybalt as the captain of courtesies, who fights as one sings, keeping the beat, and pours his irritation on those who care more about new forms of speech and fencing than about what matters. When Romeo again trades puns with him, Mercutio greets him: now he is Romeo again. Right after, he humiliates the Nurse with crude insinuations.

In Scene 1 of Act III, on a hot day, Benvolio wants to avoid trouble, and Mercutio answers with a list of absurd fights that Benvolio himself has picked, over a cough in the street and a shoe tied with an old ribbon. When Tybalt arrives, Mercutio asks for a word and a blow; when Tybalt accuses him of walking with Romeo, he answers that company is for minstrels and shows the bow of his fiddle: the sword. Tybalt calls Romeo a villain, Romeo refuses the duel, and Mercutio calls the refusal "calm, dishonorable, vile submission" and draws his sword in his place.

Wounded under the arm of Romeo, who had put himself between the two to part them, he first says it is a scratch, "not as deep as a well nor as wide as a church door, but it is enough." He says that if they ask for him the next day, they will find him a grave man. He asks Romeo why he put himself between them, and Romeo answers that he meant well. He asks Benvolio to take him into a house and repeats the curse on both houses. He dies offstage, and it is Benvolio who brings the news.

Themes Embodied

Mercutio treats everything as a joke, even his own wound: a scratch, a grave man, "food for worms." His mockery covers Romeo's love, Queen Mab, Tybalt and the Nurse, and the only time he stops joking is when he curses both houses.

The death of Mercutio is the hinge of the play: up to Scene 1 of Act III, almost everything fits into a joke, and after it the play turns into something else. The one who pays is someone who is neither Montague nor Capulet, and his curse, cast from outside, anticipates what the Prince will say at the end: that he lost two kinsmen, Mercutio and Paris, for having shut his eyes to the hatred of the houses.

Relationships

• Romeo: the friend he wants back in good graces and for whom he dies in a duel that Romeo refused.
• Benvolio: the companion in the street, whom he calls a brawler while the fight is being set up, and who brings the news of his death.
• Tybalt: the duelist he ridicules as captain of courtesies, and who kills him.
• The Nurse: the target of his mockery in the street, in the scene where she looks for Romeo.
• Paris: the kinsman whom Romeo, on recognizing him dead in the tomb, calls a kinsman of Mercutio.