Romeo and Juliet Essay
By: Stella Brooks 812
Teasing is a habit many people have.
But sometimes it can become so much more. Mercutio in William Shakespeare’s
Romeo and Juliet has a recurring habit of joking and instigating trouble.
Mercutio is Romeo’s best friend and the unnamed leader of the young Montagues
and even though Mercutio jokes and teases Romeo a lot, Romeo still loves him.
But on the side of the Capulets, Mercutio’s teasing does exactly the
opposite. Mercutio’s personality is
ultimately the reason for his death.
Act 1 Scene
4 is when we first meet Mercutio. He develops his characteristic as a joker in
his infamous Queen Mab speech. “Through lovers brains, and then they dream of
love; on courtiers knees, that dream on cur’sies straight; o’er lawyers
fingers, who straight dream on fees…” Mercutio is making fun of Romeo for
talking about his dreams, creating the fictional Queen Mab and her job as the
creature that creates dreams. He’s generating this massive, imaginative story
for the fun of joking. He doesn’t realize, however, that while he does this, he
makes Romeo’s dream seem not important at all because he’s ignoring it
completely and instead turning it into a huge joke. He’s also turning the
spotlight on him as well, making Romeo’s story forgotten and instead leaving
his fantastic joke in the minds of all the Montagues.
In Act 3 Scene 1 Mercutio and Benvolio run into
Tybalt and the other Capulets. Mercutio then begins to show his instigator side
by provoking Tybalt, who is easily provoked and is almost always ready and
willing to fight. “Consort? What, dost thou make us minstrels? An thou make
minstrels of us, look to hear nothing but discords. Here’s my fiddlestick;
here’s that shall make you dance.” The “fiddlestick” in this quote is Mercutio’s
sword, so Mercutio is intending to make Tybalt dance to keep him out of harm’s
way of the sword, meaning they’re going to fight. Mercutio doesn’t realize that
if he asks Tybalt to fight, even though he means it as joke, Tybalt is going to
take it seriously and fight him to hurt him. Mercutio doesn’t think about the
consequences when he provokes people, and that will cost him.
In the end of Act 3 Scene 1, Mercutio and Tybalt
have fought and Tybalt has mortally wounded Mercutio. The other Montagues don’t
know what happened and when Romeo asks Mercutio if he is okay, Mercutio turns
his death into a joke. “No, ‘tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church
door, but ‘tis enough. ‘Twill serve.” By joking and saying that he is not hurt,
Mercutio has made his death a lonely one because, while all his friends are
right there surrounding him while he’s dying, he hasn’t told them he’s hurt so
they all think he’s joking and don’t know that he’s actually suffering, leading
him to the most lonely death one could have. Mercutio seems upset when no one
responds to him like he’s dying, almost as if he’s so used to joking that it
just unconsciously happens, almost as if he didn’t mean to make his death a
joke.
Mercutio is both a joker and an instigator. It’s
this part of his personality that leads to his death. He instigates trouble
with Tybalt, who kills him, and he jokes to his friends that he’s not dying,
leading him to a very lonely death. This relates to the real world because we
have many people in this world who like to provoke others and joke around a
lot. But even in this world, if you instigate trouble too much, or you joke too
much about something, you can get consequences. Not as severely as Mercutio’s,
but you could make people incredibly mad at you or even lose a friendship. Many
people have personalities like Mercutio. They all just need to know when it is
the right time to stop.
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