Mercutio

• "If love be rough with you, be rough with love; prick love for pricking, and you beat love down" (Act 1, Scene 5)


  -Mercutio tries to lighten Romeo's mood before the Capulet ball --> advises Romeo to beat love's pain by fighting back/ be less sensitive, using the metaphor of a thorny rose

  -Shakespeare uses Mercutio's dialogue to provide comedic and light relief from the intensity of other scenes. Shakespeare often uses puns in Mercutio's bawdy, humorous dialogue to play on double meaning of words

  -e.g, Mercutio uses the double meaning of the word "prick" to connote thorns and sex
• "If love be rough with you, be rough with love; prick love for pricking, and you beat love down" (Act 1, Scene 5)


  -Mercutio repeatedly advises to avoid dreams of idealised love; audiences see characters' contrasting attitudes to love between the love-sick Romeo and flippant Mercutio

  
  

  -Later Mercutio delivers a soliloquy "I see Queen Mab hath been with you.", suggesting daydreams/ fantasies are a waste of time. Mercutio tells Romeo Queen Mab has been infecting his dreams and that's the cause of his affliction --> "she gallops night by night through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love"
• "I see Queen Mab hath been with you" (quote analysis continued)


  Queen Mab is described as being very small, in relation to the human world, and everything around her is tiny- Mercutio continues to make this point throughout his soliloquy saying "she comes in shape no bigger than an agate-stone" --> this highlights Mercutio's belief that Romeo's despair/ extreme lovelorn state is over exaggerated, and nothing more than a minor issue.

  This proves to be true as immediately after Romeo sees Juliet he forgets about Rosaline.
• Queen Mab serves to underline Romeo's immaturity in the context of relationships; however as the story progresses it can be observed that though facing challenges and experiences that force him to grow up: Romeo becomes noticeably more mature.

  
  

  Contextually: In English folklore Queen Mab was a mischief-making fairy