Mercutio
Summary of Mercutio
Romeo’s best friend.
Mercutio is one of the play’s most dynamic and complex characters.
Wild, humorous, easy-going, and fun-loving, Mercutio’s manic energy, rambling stories, and wit masks a much darker person.
Mercutio is quick with words and is one of the play’s most skilled masters of puns and wordplay—he is always ready with a scandalous joke or a bawdy tale.
Mercutio’s quickness to fight rivals Tybalt’s hotheaded rage, and Mercutio often involves himself in brawls that shouldn’t concern him, fighting on behalf of the Montagues.
When once such fight with Tybalt ends with Tybalt fatally stabbing Mercutio, he attempts to play the wound off as a “scratch”—but as he succumbs to his wounds, he rails against the forces that have killed him, wishing “a plague [on] both [the] houses” of Montague and Capulet and revealing in his dying moments his deep contempt, frustration, and anger for the petty, ancient feud between them.
Why he is important:
Mercutio's death marks a clear turning point in the play for Romeo.
After Mercutio is killed, Romeo then takes on the fight Tybalt initially wanted with him, and kills Tybalt. It is the moment that Romeo gets fully drawn into the feud, and becomes violent to the point he murders a grown man.
Here, Romeo experiences an almost 'coming of age' moment where he transitions (moves) from the world of boyhood fantasy, romance and dreams into the masculine adult world of loyalty, vengeance and violence. Mercutio's death and its impact / consequences reveals the true power of the hatred of the warring between two families, that a young man like Romeo, so innocent, separated and sensitive could be pushed to a moment of crisis, which changes him permanately.
Mercutio therefore shows us the power of friendship and loyalty and shows how ordinary, sensitive people can get drawn into the quarrel.
Act 1 scene 4
Mercutio's care-free attitude to love
Act 1 scene 4 Mercutio's attitude to love.docxAct 3 scene 1
Romeo: Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.
Mercutio: No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve: ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man.
