Hello everybody and welcome to today’s video on ‘Romeo and Juliet’,
analysing the character of Mercutio.
As one of Romeo’s friends, Mercutio doesn’t belong to the Capulet or the
Montague families. We learn after his death that he was related to both the prince (‘thy kinsman,
brave Mercutio’, Act 3, Scene 1) and Paris (‘Mercutio's kinsman, noble County Paris!’,
Act 5, Scene 3). Despite his significant lineage, Mercutio often functions as
little more than Romeo’s comic sidekick, in much the same role as the nurse for Juliet.
Just like the nurse, a lot of Mercutio’s dialogue revolves around sexual innuendo and bawdy humour.
The audience first meets Mercutio in Act 1, Scene 4, where his innuendo-ridden words remind them of
the bawdy humour from Sampson and Gregory in the play’s opening scene. Sampson and Gregory
never appear again after the opening scene, and Shakespeare uses Mercutio to continue to what
they established: a view of masculinity as being a mixture of aggression and overt sexualisation.
Mercutio often twists Romeo’s words into a sexual pun:
ROMEO
Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, Too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks
like thorn. MERCUTIO
If love be rough with you, be rough with love: Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.
Romeo’s romantic view of love causes him to moan ‘under love’s heavy burden do I sink’. Mercutio,
on the other hand, offers a much more sexual view of love. When Mercutio
answers Romeo by telling him to ‘Prick love for pricking’, he is punning on the word ‘prick’,
a slang term for penis. Two distinct views of love are presented here: romantic on the
one hand and purely sexual on the other. As well as being overtly sexual, Mercutio,
like Tybalt, is prone to aggressive outbursts. Again, this mirrors what
we learned from the play’s opening scene in which the Capulets and Montagues fight in the streets.
While Mercutio is presented as aggressive and sex obsessed, he can also be seen as a foil
to Romeo. A foil is a character who contrasts with another character, usually the protagonist,
to highlight qualities of the other character. Although Romeo eventually gives way to aggression
in the murder of Tybalt, for the most part he is presented as the opposite of Mercutio:
Shakespeare uses Mercutio to emphasise the character traits of Romeo. Again,
we can say the same about the nurse and Juliet. Mercutio’s long-winded speech about ‘Queen Mab’
may initially seem to be unimportant, but it reveals a lot about him, and this will prove
important further into the play. The Queen Mab speech starts off like a child’s fairy tale, with
innocent images like a chariot made of ‘an empty hazel-nut’. This story begins with light-hearted,
fairy-tale-like humour. However, as the tale unfolds, the images get more and more sinister,
moving from ‘lovers’ brains’ to soldiers ‘cutting foreign throats’ and finishing with ‘maids’ being
taught how to have sex. There is a frenzied chaos to the speech, and the shift from playful
to sinister imagery symbolises the turmoil and chaos that is so key to the character of Mercutio.
Put simply, this speech warns us that Mercutio is more than just comic relief—he is trouble.
In Act 3, Scene 1, Shakespeare uses a mixture of blank verse,
prose and rhymed verse to convey meaning: • Blank verse is iambic pentameter that does
not rhyme. It has lines of ten syllables, with alternating unstressed and stressed syllables.
In your copy of the play, blank verse looks like poetry written out on the page.
Prose is ordinary written language—there is no rhyme scheme or specific metrical structure.
Usually, prose is given to characters of low social status, or those engaged in comic scenes.
• In your copy of the play, prose looks like ordinary written sentences and paragraphs.
• Rhymed verse is, unsurprisingly, lines of verse which rhyme. It might be iambic pentameter,
or it might be another rhyme scheme, such as the trochaic tetrameter spoken
by the witches in ‘Macbeth’. Shakespeare also used rhyming couplets (two lines that rhyme,
often in iambic pentameter) to signal the end of a scene. Again, it looks like poetry on the page.
In Act 3, Scene 1, Benvolio speaks in blank verse: I pray thee, good Mercutio, let's retire.
The day is hot, the Capels are abroad; And if we meet, we shall not scape a brawl,
For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring.
These lines are ordered and tightly controlled—a reflection of the character
of Benvolio who is the same. The blank verse reflects his upper-class status.
Mercutio, on the other hand, replies in prose:
Thou? Why, thou wilt quarrel with a man that hath a hair more or a hair less in
his beard than thou hast. Thou wilt quarrel with a man for cracking nuts, having no other
reason but because thou hast hazel eyes. Mercutio is an upper-class character,
but the use of prose here is not out of the ordinary because this is a comic moment. Mercutio
is essentially winding Benvolio up, describing him in a way that is so clearly inaccurate.
However, Mercutio also speaks in prose when arguing with Tybalt:
Good King of Cats, nothing but one of your nine lives: that I mean to make bold withal, and,
as you shall use me hereafter, dry-beat the rest of the eight. Will you pluck your sword
out of his pitcher by the ears? Make haste, lest mine be about your ears ere it be out.
This is not a comic scene, so why does Shakespeare present Mercutio’s lines in
prose? The lines are uncontrolled and follow no rules or regulations. We can
say that Shakespeare is using prose to mirror Mercutio’s character: just like prose, he is
uncontrolled and follows no rules or regulations. Once Mercutio is slain, Romeo calls his friend
a ‘gentleman, the Prince's near ally, / My very friend’. This tricolon (group of three)
of compliments demonstrates the high esteem in which Romeo held Mercutio. The inclusion
of Mercutio's relationship to the prince was incredibly important in society in the late
sixteenth century because royalty was seen as divine. The possessive ‘my’ adds a sense of
sentimentality to Romeo's sorrow. This is then followed by his own self-blame where he points
to his ‘effeminate’ character (now he loves Juliet) as the reason for Mercutio’s death.
Mercutio’s early exit from the play is also worthy of analysis. Mercutio leaves the play in Act 3,
and the nurse exits in Act 4. The two comic sidekicks disappear. With Mercutio’s death,
tragic elements of the play build to the eventual deaths of Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare removes
the jokers because the time for joking has gone. KEY QUOTATION
A key quote for Mercutio might highlight his use of humour and sexual imagery:
‘Prick love for pricking’. This allows a direct comparison to be made with Shakespeare’s
presentation of Romeo as more romantic. If you found this video useful please do
give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel. Everything I go through in the video can be found
in the new 3rd edition of my ‘Romeo and Juliet’ guide, which is linked in the description.