How is Mercutio presented in Romeo and Juliet?
Mercutio is presented as a comic relief for the audience and is characterised as a literary foil
to Romeo (as he voices an adversarial concept of love). His premature death and
consequent absence of the main jovial presence in Act 3 allows an audience to predict the
initiation of the domino effect through the remainder of the play: this enables Shakespeare
to illustrate death as an inevitable reality through momento mari. Simultaneously,
Shakespeare utilises Mercutio to challenge blind Elizabethan credence of fate and
predetermination through forming a parallel with Veronese society’s conflict.
Through his Queen Mab speech, Mercutio is conveyed as a literary foil to mock Romeo and
presents the antithesis to Romeo’s idealized notion of romantic union in order for
Shakespeare to highlight the ingenuity of the concepts of ‘true love’ within the play. Queen
Mab flies ‘o’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight on dream of fees’ demonstrating that lovers
desire love so dream of love by the same logic that lawyers desire money hence dream of
money and Mercutio extends to Romeo that dreams are illusions so believing in them is as
nonsensical as believing in fairies. The parallel of ‘lawyers’, often caricatures of greed with
relations to corrupt tax collectors in the Elizabethan era, to ‘lovers’ being the recipient of
Queen Mab’s dreams trivialises Romeo’s glamourised, ennobling version of love to
materialistic desire; this both presents Mercutio’s view on love as a physical pursuit
accompanied by his sexually heedless, lower class character and enhances Romeo’s view on
love as an illusion and a manifestation of his blind lust and a meagre desire of love. The
dialogue may be comical to both Elizabethan and modern audiences due to the
juxtaposition of dull reality and frivolous folklore, intended by Shakespeare to delay the
developing pace of action with a when perceived at surface-level, a tangent, but develops to
become prophetical and intertwined with the plot, leaving an audience slightly puzzled,
though its purpose may become clearer more rapidly to a modern audience as Romeo and
Juliet itself is perceived as Veronese fiction originating from retellings of ‘The Tragic History
of Romeus and Juliet’ and suggests an inner connection between the two tales. Mercutio’s
speech unlike most of his dialogue in prose is written in blank verse, assigning it a prophecy
like structure and suggests despite Romeo’s dismissal of it, this speech is more insightful,
which an audience can begin to discern as his description takes a darker turn. Queen Mab,
when angered, ‘plagues’ the lips of ladies with ‘blisters’: the selection of the noun blisters
refers to sexual disease insinuating that if one is too self-indulged in their frivolous illusions
of desire, the retribution is not a fantasy and is befitting to the desire which may be
Mercutio’s prophetical foreshadowing of the illusion of poison (‘blisters’) on Juliet’s ‘lips’
that Romeo can’t deconstruct so is driven and drives Juliet to real death: furthermore, as
the consequence is befitting to the desire, the poison could also be symbolic of Romeo’s
love (fake and temporary, gifted out of desperation and an agency of their tragic death).
Symbolically, this speech is a microcosm of the narrative structure of the play, beginning
with a ‘love story’ fashioned from the illusions of love from Romeo though appearing
genuine, facing a turning point at Mercutio’s death, catalysing the domino effect that results
in deaths of Romeo and Juliet and the fact Mercutio himself dismisses it as ‘nothing’ the
audience may feel accordingly and dismiss any solemn analysis of his speech due to his
comical characterisation and allow Shakespeare to demonstrate that as Mercutio warns of
Romeo’s illusion of love, the audience’s blindness to this warning is met with adversity and
amplifies their shock and grief in the face of Mercutio’s death. Therefore, Mercutio is
Mercutio is presented as a comic relief for the audience and is characterised as a literary foil
to Romeo (as he voices an adversarial concept of love). His premature death and
consequent absence of the main jovial presence in Act 3 allows an audience to predict the
initiation of the domino effect through the remainder of the play: this enables Shakespeare
to illustrate death as an inevitable reality through momento mari. Simultaneously,
Shakespeare utilises Mercutio to challenge blind Elizabethan credence of fate and
predetermination through forming a parallel with Veronese society’s conflict.
Through his Queen Mab speech, Mercutio is conveyed as a literary foil to mock Romeo and
presents the antithesis to Romeo’s idealized notion of romantic union in order for
Shakespeare to highlight the ingenuity of the concepts of ‘true love’ within the play. Queen
Mab flies ‘o’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight on dream of fees’ demonstrating that lovers
desire love so dream of love by the same logic that lawyers desire money hence dream of
money and Mercutio extends to Romeo that dreams are illusions so believing in them is as
nonsensical as believing in fairies. The parallel of ‘lawyers’, often caricatures of greed with
relations to corrupt tax collectors in the Elizabethan era, to ‘lovers’ being the recipient of
Queen Mab’s dreams trivialises Romeo’s glamourised, ennobling version of love to
materialistic desire; this both presents Mercutio’s view on love as a physical pursuit
accompanied by his sexually heedless, lower class character and enhances Romeo’s view on
love as an illusion and a manifestation of his blind lust and a meagre desire of love. The
dialogue may be comical to both Elizabethan and modern audiences due to the
juxtaposition of dull reality and frivolous folklore, intended by Shakespeare to delay the
developing pace of action with a when perceived at surface-level, a tangent, but develops to
become prophetical and intertwined with the plot, leaving an audience slightly puzzled,
though its purpose may become clearer more rapidly to a modern audience as Romeo and
Juliet itself is perceived as Veronese fiction originating from retellings of ‘The Tragic History
of Romeus and Juliet’ and suggests an inner connection between the two tales. Mercutio’s
speech unlike most of his dialogue in prose is written in blank verse, assigning it a prophecy
like structure and suggests despite Romeo’s dismissal of it, this speech is more insightful,
which an audience can begin to discern as his description takes a darker turn. Queen Mab,
when angered, ‘plagues’ the lips of ladies with ‘blisters’: the selection of the noun blisters
refers to sexual disease insinuating that if one is too self-indulged in their frivolous illusions
of desire, the retribution is not a fantasy and is befitting to the desire which may be
Mercutio’s prophetical foreshadowing of the illusion of poison (‘blisters’) on Juliet’s ‘lips’
that Romeo can’t deconstruct so is driven and drives Juliet to real death: furthermore, as
the consequence is befitting to the desire, the poison could also be symbolic of Romeo’s
love (fake and temporary, gifted out of desperation and an agency of their tragic death).
Symbolically, this speech is a microcosm of the narrative structure of the play, beginning
with a ‘love story’ fashioned from the illusions of love from Romeo though appearing
genuine, facing a turning point at Mercutio’s death, catalysing the domino effect that results
in deaths of Romeo and Juliet and the fact Mercutio himself dismisses it as ‘nothing’ the
audience may feel accordingly and dismiss any solemn analysis of his speech due to his
comical characterisation and allow Shakespeare to demonstrate that as Mercutio warns of
Romeo’s illusion of love, the audience’s blindness to this warning is met with adversity and
amplifies their shock and grief in the face of Mercutio’s death. Therefore, Mercutio is
