Mercutio

• Mercutio 

   

  AO1 - Intelligent and witty

  ‘Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man.’
• AO2: Mercutio’s pun plays on the double meaning of the adjective ‘grave’, meaning serious and a place where dead people are. The fact he uses this dark humour creates pathos as Mercutio dies ignorant about Romeo’s circumstances that led to his death. Mercutio’s curse after this ‘A plague o’ both your houses’ comes true. As the audience already know the protagonists will die from the prologue, the use of dramatic irony creates tension.
• AO3: The irony is that Mercutio dies fighting to protect Romeo’s honour. Maybe Shakespeare was criticising the importance of male honour.
• Mercutio 

  AO1 - Disillusioned with love

  lovers ‘dream of love’ while soldiers dream of ‘cutting foreign throats’ cynical
• AO2: In this Queen Mab speech, he uses a metaphor to present his vision of a fantasy world in which dreams depend on the dreamer. The speech reflects both Mercutio's eloquent wit and his aggressive disposition. In his speech, the comic activities of the mischievous fairies are juxtaposed with the violent images of a soldier’s dream.
• AO3: Mercutio is dismissing Romeo’s Petrarchan outlook and characterises him as a clueless romantic for believing that dreams foreshadow future events.
• Mercutio

  AO1 - Bawdy

  ‘If love be rough with you, be rough with love; / Prick love for pricking and you beat love down.’
• AO2: Mercutio ridicules Romeo as a fashionable, Petrarchan lover for his use of conventional poetic imagery. He puns lewdly, Whereas the naïve Romeo is in love with the idea of being in love and devoted to the distant Rosaline, Mercutio is a predatory lover, hunting for objectified, female prey. His bawdy wit thus sets up Romeo to take the role of the innocent tragic hero.
• AO3: sexual jokes throughout the play. Unsurprisingly, then, there is a double meaning in this line. On the one hand, he is telling Romeo not to play the victim, that if love is treating him roughly, then he should treat love roughly in return. If he would just strike back at love, so to speak, when love strikes at him, he can master it. On the other hand, "prick" is a sexual innuendo, showing us he may not separate love from sexual desire.
• Mercutio presented as

  • Intelligent (puns): “Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man.” 

  • Cynical about love/ foil to Romeo: “If love be rough with you, be rough with love.” 

  • Mocking: He calls Tybalt a “rat catcher” 

  • Loyal friend: He wants to protect Romeo and can’t understand his ‘vile submission’ 

  • Only character to blame characters rather than fate: “a plague o’ both your houses” 

  • Outsider: Through the “Queen Mab” imagery, Mercutio suggests that all desires and fantasies are as nonsensical